Streaming Video

Streaming video is a form of downloading that has become very popular on the internet in the last few years. With improve technologies people are accessing TV shows, movies, and even live feeds with this technology. Many sports events and other entertainment activities on TV are streams to enhance their coverage. A good example of just what is a streaming video is everything you watch on YouTube is a streaming video. This technology has allowed anyone with a video to get their video online for possible viewing by anyone who wants to access it.

Just what is streaming video, and how does it work? Let’s not get technically specific, as this is very complex and involved, but instead we will discuss the basics of how this stuff works. First and for most it is important to note that until internet speeds became “high speed”, streaming video was just a pipe dream. Once internets speeds became much faster it became feasible to transfer data at a high enough speed to transfer video material. The quality of the picture becomes critical in just how fast a connection is required. The better the picture, the faster the connection needs to be to sustain the feed without delays. What is happening is that instead of downloading the video to your computer, you view it through a temporary file while it is being downloaded (thus streaming). You never have to download the file onto your computer.

This technology has created an evolution of sorts in the movie industry. Now movie downloading is becoming very commonplace, and streaming movie downloads is a big part of this activity. A classic example of this is when Netflix started to offer its members a huge library of films that they can watch with this format. This collection of over 12,000 movie downloads are available for unlimited viewing by any member (wow!). You normally will have to watch these streaming downloads on your computer. If you have an Xbox 360 with and an Xbox Live membership, you can use the Xbox and watch these movies on your TV! Netflix has a very sophisticated system that will read you internet speed and produce the highest picture quality that will allow the stream to flow without stops. A buffer is always established for streaming downloads, but if the connection slows the viewer will “catch up” with download and it will need to pause to allow the download to “get ahead” again.

Movie downloads are possibly going to be the most common way we watch, buy and rent movies in the future. Future developments will allow downloading to become as high quality as other type of viewing. Once this happens the sky is the limit for movie downloads.