Some things about RealVideo:
- Made by RealNetworks
- First released in 1997
- The official player is RealPlayer (so RealPlayer is the actual mechanism playing the video footage on your computer screen) and it is currently at version 11. It is also called RealOne.
- Supported on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile phones
- Usually paired with RealAudio and packaged in a RealMedia container (which is a streaming video application; meaning it does not need to be downloaded)
- Works with both normal IP connections as well as multi-cast IP connections
- Uses a proprietatary video codec: Video codec is a type of device/software that enables video compression and decompression for digital video. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec
- To make its real time streaming feature happen, RealVideo uses constant bit rate encoding, so that the same amount of data is sent over the network every second.
- RealVideo has come out with a variable bit rate that results in a higher video quality but can be unpredictable with regard to how quickly it will network capacity it will need and can result in an interrupted viewing.
- RealPlayer does not record RealVideo streams, this is a feature that RealNetworks has advertised to broadcasting agencies as a good deterrent for users to not illegally copy the content. However, time-shifting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-shifting) software is generally considered legal, and allows a user to save the streaming to other files for future use.
- RealPlayer apparently has been complained about with regard to invasiveness on your computer once you've downloaded it and all the advertising that you will deal with once you have it. http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/2004/02/29/real_obnoxious
1 comment:
Lianne, you did a very nice job here. You not only explained the characteristics of RealVideo but also the concepts such as codec and bit rate encoding. It shows that you are trying to understand these sometimes obscure technical concepts!
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