Abacast Inc.

Streaming quality is heavily dependent on a few key factors. One of them is your ability to push out your content to a distribution server. Even the highest quality content can be rendered choppy with a poor internet connection.

So what are some things to look for in a service? Your key aspect is upload bandwidth. This is normally not as important as download speeds to a normal ISP customer, but because your priority will be sending data out as opposed to downloading, you need to pick an ISP that can provide you with AT LEAST double upstream of the bitrate you will be broadcasting at. You will most likely not achieve full upload speeds to any server due to internet/server fluctuations. Stay away from wireless routers or mobile cards as much as you can as these connections typically drop data packets and need to retransmit. This is normally not a problem with web browsing but in a constant data stream, these are transformed into cutouts and video quality degrading for your viewers. Also, make sure that no one else is using the connection for other work while you are broadcasting, that steals your bandwidth!

Before beginning to choose a streaming package it’s important to understand the different delivery methods and codecs. These ultimately affect your viewers experience. You will also need to know if you’re planning to be streaming audio, video, or both?

Windows Media format offers a great delivery for audio/video, can easily be embedded on a webpage but it not natively supported on Apple computers. They will have to install Flip4Mac or Windows Media Player for MAC. Also, Windows Media currently is not supported on most mobile phones.

Adobe Flash streaming is considered a more universal option as Adobe’s Flash player is installed on the majority of internet computers. Adobe Flash is typically more CPU intensive so older machines may have trouble keeping up, and to display the stream on your website requires a separate flash application.

If you are just broadcasting an audio MP3 stream, using Icecast or Shoutcast are very direct methods of streaming to stand alone apps (Winamp, iTunes), hardware (Squeezebox), and are usually supported on mobile phones. Standard MP3 format requires the use of higher bitrates to achieve good sound quality, but recently AAC has allowed reduced bitrates with great sound quality. There are many formats out there, make sure and do your homework on what the pros and cons are for each type to make sure you present your users with effortless streaming!