If streaming on-demand content was indexed during encoding, they can use Seek functions (Fast-Forward and Rewind) on their player to jump to any part of the stream without waiting for a download to finish. Users that connect to a stream can start to play it almost immediately. This helps prevent the network from becoming overloaded and helps maintain system reliability. Streaming uses bandwidth more efficiently than downloading because it sends data over the network only at the speed that is necessary for the client to render it correctly. It is especially useful for streaming large amounts of data over busy, congested networks and low-bandwidth connections. It provides high-quality streaming over a wide range of bandwidths to Windows Media Player and to Web browsers that use the Windows Media Player 9 Series ActiveX control or the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in. This section introduces the two primary Windows Server roles that are used to deliver digital media to clients:Ī Windows Media server is designed specifically for streaming on-demand and live digital media to clients. Introducing Windows Media servers and Web servers This article introduces the delivery methods and bandwidth-management capabilities of Windows Media servers and Web servers, two important aspects of media delivery to consider when you are trying to decide which server type to deploy for your delivery scenario. In non-multicast streaming scenarios, depending upon your business need, a Windows Media server or a Web server can both be viable options for digital media content delivery today. With the broader availability of high-bandwidth networks and new media delivery features for IIS 7 and above, the differences that previously favored the use of a Windows Media server over a Web server for delivering digital media content have blurred. Clients use different methods to receive digital media content from Windows Media servers and Web servers: they stream digital media from a Windows Media server and download digital media from a Web server. Verdict:Ī powerful media server which is exceptionally easy to set up and configure.You can deliver digital media audio and video files and live streams either from a Windows Media server (a server that is running Windows Media Services) or from a Web server (a server that is running Internet Information Services (IIS)). You can also discover other devices from the server and browse their media, for example, the videos on an iPad.Īs with anything else network-related, there's plenty of scope for problems, but fortunately, you get a lot of setup and troubleshooting documentation to help figure them out. Other systems on your network can then access them via port 9001 on your computer's IP address (just enter an address like 192.168.1.x:9001 in your web browser). Once it's up and running, all you really need to do is set up folders you'd like to share: music, pictures, whatever. When there are setup steps to consider, they're fairly straightforward: choose the speed of your network, do you want to hide the advanced settings, and so on. Universal Media Server installs and configures them itself. The program is powered by assorted other open-source applications - FFmpeg, MEncoder, tsMuxeR, MediaInfo, OpenSubtitles - but you don't need to have any of these beforehand. Supported devices include Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) and PlayStation 4 (PS4), Microsoft Xbox One and 360, many TVs (Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, Vizio, LG, Philips, Sharp), smart phones (iPhone, Android, etc.), Blu-ray players, and more. Universal Media Server is a Java-based server which can stream video, audio or pictures to any DLNA device.
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