Continuous Media Server

Continuous Media Server

Introduction

Media Server lets users play back live audio feeds using Internet Protocol multicast or on-demand access to pre-recorded audio clips. Media Server can unicast or multicast both stored audio clips and live feeds. Unicast is a type of broadcast that delivers packets to a single destination, whereas multicast delivers packets to only a subset of all possible destinations. 

Businesses can take advantage of these features to deploy audio-enabled network applications such as: 
•    Multimedia training applications for employees on an intranet and outside partners on the Internet. 
•    Internal and external publications whose visibility and effectiveness are enhanced by audio content. 
•    Broadcast audio briefings over the network to communicate with internal and external partners. 
Multicasting is not limited to data captured live from an audio device; you can also loop a stored audio file and serve it as a live feed, a method that can help alleviate network traffic problems on high demand sites. 

A theater site could, for example, record a listing of all currently playing movies, along with show times, special offers, and ticket prices and then multicast and loop the file. A customer who tunes in mid-multicast could simply stay tuned until the file starts playing again.