Streaming Media Storage and Distribution Services:

has conducted some experimental activities that involving the creation, storage and distribution of streaming media content. This experimentation has included storage and distribution of content into face-to-face and online courses.

Streaming media is a sequence of moving audio and video in a compressed form over the Internet and displayed by the viewer as they arrive using data packets. The program/technology that does the compression and decompression is sometimes called the codec.With streaming streaming media, users do not have to wait to download a large file before seeing the video or hearing the sound. Instead, the media is sent in a continuous stream and is played as it arrives. The user needs a player, which is a special program that uncompresses and sends video data to the display and audio data to speakers. A player can be either an integral part of a browser or downloaded from the Internet.
Some examples of streaming media technologies include RealSystem G2 from RealNetwork, Microsoft Windows Media Technologies. Microsoft uses the standard MPEG compression algorithm for video. For most Web users, the streaming media will be limited to the data rates of the connection (for example, up to 128 Kbps with an ISDN connection).

Streaming video is usually sent from prerecorded video files, but can also be distributed as part of a live broadcast. In a live broadcast, the video signal is converted into a compressed digital signal and transmitted from a special Web server that is able to do multicast, sending the same file to multiple users at the same time.