by Executive Software Team
http://www.execsoft.com
Microsoft and RealNetworks have now gone to war on media streaming standards,
both recently announcing new products with different standards. Streaming plays
a vital role in the immediate future of the Internet, as it solves the problem of
real-time video, sound and graphics presentations over current limited bandwidth.
Streaming works by buffering a few seconds of the presentation on the client side,
thereby making up for delayed packet delivery from the server.
Microsoft has released its new version of their Windows Media Player, which not
only supports streaming media (Microsoft's Active Streaming Format, as well as RealAudio
and RealVideo formats) but WAV and QuickTime as well. Media Player will be included
in future versions of Windows operating systems. Concurrently, RealNetworks, which
owns roughly 85% of the Web streaming market, announced the beta version of its
new G2 player, along with a server and encoder, which supports their
own RealAudio and RealVideo formats.
The standards for the future are diverging with these products.
RealNetworks' new G2 player is the first to support Synchronized
Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), which delivers presentations with synchronized
audio, video, text, graphics, and animation which has been adopted as a standard
by the World Wide Web Consortium.
Microsoft, for the time being, has no plans to support SMIL, arguing that existing
Internet standards, including JavaScript, Java, or their Dynamic HTML (DHTML), already
are suitable for synchronizing media presentations.
For more information on Windows Media Player, including free download information,
go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/basics/features/communicating/netshow.asp
For more information on RealNetworks new G2 player, go to:
http://www.real.com/g2/index.html
@Macarlo, Inc.
@Macarlo's Shareware & Web
OS/2
Java Lobby Member
Java Site Accredited
[TOP]
[HOME] [INDEX]