Until a few years ago the best way to ensure that video and large sound files worked well over the Internet was to download the whole file and run it from your machine at home. If you downloaded the file yourself, the download time was obvious; you had to wait a long time till the file had finished saving. Sometimes, though, you would just be waiting a very long time for the movie or sound to begin. During that time it was being downloaded to a temporary file on your hardrive before it started to play.
Streaming
Enter Streaming. Streaming takes files, whether they are sound, video, animation, or other media types, breaks them up into smaller pieces and sends them to their destination. This is very similar to how computers send information across a network or the Internet in general.
RealPlayer is able to read the file stream as it is coming in and begin playing it long before the rest of the file arrives. Imagine reading a novel as someone hands you page after page, rather than waiting for them to finish the whole book and handing you the entire novel at once.
Of course, if the file was simply read and played for you as it came in, you would have a good number of interruptions; think about how often you have to wait for a Web page to display on your screen. Now, consider that Web pages are much smaller than most media files (audio, video, animation, etc.). RealPlayer combines another technology with streaming to make playback smooth: buffering.
During buffering a whole bunch of packets are collected before being played. Imagine a cup being filled from above in fits and starts. A small hole in the bottom of the cup allows a constant stream of water to drain from the cup. As long as there is enough water backed-up in the cup, the stream will continue to flow out at a steady rate.
As RealPlayer begins to play the file, it continues to collect packets in reserve. This means that even if there are minor delays in getting the information packets to your computer, your experience of the music will be continuous rather than having it stutter along erratically.
Streams can be optimized for different bandwidths. Bandwidth is, essentially, the amount of information that can pass through a particular point of the wire in a specific amount of time. The higher the bandwidth, the greater the amount of information that can come through. The speed of your modem, if that is what you use to connect to the Internet, determines the bandwidth of the stream that you can receive.
A 28.8kbps modem can receive, approximately, 28.8 thousand bits per second. A 56K modem is capable of receiving, approximately, 56 thousand bits per second?almost double the capability of a 28.8 modem (remember, a bit is a single binary number). Of course these capabilities assume that your phone connections are perfect, which few are. In other words, your actual mileage may vary. The important point is that the higher the bandwidth you can receive, the higher the quality the sound or video will be.
Information courtesy Real.com
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