Dare To Stream

Entrepreneur, Feb, 2001 by Mike Hogan

Compared with the Internet, streaming video works even better in a controlled environment like a corporate LAN, WAN or intranet. Today's 1Mbps-to-100Mbps networks more than suffice, but Cahners In-Stat Group expects 1Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet installations for LANs to grow 55 percent per year through 2004.

Joint research by research firms Arbitron and Coleman shows that people are twice as likely to use streaming video from the Internet when they have a broadband connection, almost doubling their time online. "Broadband catapults the Internet to a position on par with television and radio in terms of media time spent," says Pierre Bouvard of Arbitron. "[Fifty percent] of Americans with broadband report they're making more online purchases now that they have it."

While streaming video and audio get all the attention now, a much broader set of applications will be streamed eventually, predicts Parks. Streaming is an important enabling technology for the ASP-style services that Microsoft.NET is all about. In the future, many different kinds of software and services are likely to be streamed to your desktop while you work.

Says Lampmann, "This whole revolution will take a couple of years before its widespread, but it has begun."

Mike Hogan, Entrepreneur's technology editor.

WHAT YOU NEED

To view streaming videos from a Web page, you need:

* A Net-connected Windows 9x or Macintosh PC

* An Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape 4.0 Web browser

* RealPlayer, Windows Media Player or QuickTime

* At least one regular phone line, but preferably a broadband connection

To create streaming videos, you also need:

* At least a 133MHz processor, 64MB RAM and a 28.8Kbps modem

* A video camera

* Video compression/production software, such as iVista or VideoShare

* A Web page to host your videos