Adaptive streaming is a popular, and rather elegant technology to adapt the audio-video streams provided over the internet dynamically to the users' needs. But the terminology used can be a bit confusing, especially as manufactures have implemented the concept in slightly different ways, with slightly different names. Senior researcher Niels Laukens (VRT Medialab) has written a brief tutorial to clarify what adaptive streaming is and how it is implemented.
Streaming or downloading?
One of the confusions the author addresses in his article, is the question if adaptive streaming is really streaming or merely downloading. The definition problem not only has to do with technical parameters, but also involves legal aspects, as some rightholders don't like the thought of users storing their content, though they would be ok with the same content simply 'passing through' users' devices.
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Optimising multi-platform streaming The implementations of adaptive streaming differ amongst the main vendors (Adobe, Apple and Microsoft), but they have enough in common to provide professional users with the opportunity to optimise their back-end infrastructure. That basically involves encoding content only ones, but rewrapping it according to the needs of the different platforms.
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