Progressive Download or Streaming – Which is Best for Your
Video Business
Most video and audio is delivered by Progressive Download
HTTP
New York, NY – (May 20, 2008)
– Panther Express,
a leading global provider of
high-performance content delivery services,
today announced their guide to efficiently
delivering online video. Many companies and
technical staff struggle with choosing
between the advantages and features
associated with the two main flavors of
video delivery – progressive download and
streaming. Now that many of the features
first associated with streaming are
available through Panther with progressive
download, the choice is now simple.
Get the Free White Paper
http://www.pantherexpress.net/contact/video-whitepaper/
“Most end users cannot tell the difference
between the video delivered by progressive
download and that delivered via a streaming
video server,” said Steve Liddell, CEO of
Panther Express. “It all streams. It is not
until you look very carefully at video
player functions like how the navigation
actually works (rewind and fast forward),
that there is a difference.”
Most Internet Video is delivered by
progressive download. For example, YouTube
video is delivered by progressive download.
According to comScore Video Matrix, YouTube
originates over 34% of all video delivered
by US content providers. Our analysis of
the top video sites has revealed that over
65% of video traffic, and over 55% of sites
are using progressive download.
Panther Express’s network is based on over
10 years high performance HTTP delivery and
is built upon today’s Internet technologies
and architectures, not that of a decade ago.
For example, years ago, the only acceptable
way to deliver video was via streaming
protocols such as RTSP, RTP, or RTCP that
required proprietary players and expensive
servers. Often referred to as Streaming
Video, these solutions were costly and did
not scale well but offered more
functionality at the time. Yet, as
technology has evolved, there was a
wholesale migration towards to a new way of
delivering video delivery via the standard
HTTP protocol (often referred to as
Progressive Download). Less expensive, it
also scales well. This shift has occurred
due to customer acceptance once the
technology evolved to include many of the
features that were once only possible with
“true” streaming protocols.
By using metadata attached to encoded FLV
files, Progressive Download can now allow
users full seek and navigation at any time
without requiring full file download. By
using bandwidth throttling (specify bit rate
that files should be delivered at), it is
now possible to deliver only the amount of
video that will be viewed, preventing wasted
bandwidth. To maximize security, no-cache
headers can be used to prevent browsers from
storing content in cache and further DRM
protection is easily available from
partners.
There are many old
misconceptions about progressive download
and streaming video. For an up to date look
at the reality of both, plus a comparison of
each format’s features, please check out our
free guide to “Delivering Internet Video”
About Panther Express
Panther Express Corp. is the industry’s best
value CDN solution - a high-performance
content delivery network (CDN) with an
innovative low-cost infrastructure. Founded
in 2005 by former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan
and DoubleClick Co-founder and former CTO
Dwight Merriman, Panther Express ensures
rapid, reliable and scalable performance to
gaming, video, e-commerce, webhosting, news,
blogs and Web 2.0 Internet sites worldwide.
Panther Express is privately held and based
in New York. Panther Express has over two
years of experience in content delivery with
over 300 customers using our solutions every
day. www.pantherexpress.net
For more information contact Panther Express
at 40 West 20th Street, New York,
New York 10011
Contact:
Judy Baliman, Panther Express
jbaliman@pantherexpress.net
646-747-0941
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