Streamed Delivery


Strengths

  1. Streamed media is delivered with little waiting time. While there is an initial buffering and synchronization time required, in most cases, delivery of content can begin in less than 10 seconds.

  2. Most streaming technologies allow you to provide multiple versions of content to accomodate different connection speeds.

  3. Streaming media prevents a user's hard drive from being filled with the remnants of videos viewed in thepast. Streaming sends the content to the computer and is discarded as soon as it is played.

  4. Streaming content can help control access to materials. Since content is not downloaded to a user's computer, you can remove the link to the content and ensure that no one has access to it after a certain point.

  5. Copyrighted material can be controlled when content is streamed. Since content is never downloaded to a user's computer as a complete media file it is difficult to save the entire file and generally viewers are not able to use it in any other manner. Many streaming servers can be configured to restrict access by network location or other credentials.

  6. Since streamed files reside on a streaming server, web server space and bandwidth will not be consumed by video clips.

Weaknesses

  1. Since streamed content is delivered based on connection capacity. If the video bandwidth requirement exceeds the users's connection speed, the playback experience will get choppy and frequent rebuffereing will make it intolerable for longer clips. with increasing bandwidth available to most users, though, this is becoming less of a concern.

  2. Streamed files reside on another server and creation of pointer or "meta files" are recommended. This means additional steps in the workflow.

  3. Streamed media is not saved to the disk of the user's computer, so an Internet connection is required each time a user wishes to review course materials. With downloaded materials, the user is only required to be connected once and is able to review downloaded materials at any time -- without being connected to the Internet.

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