CHAPTER 20 RealMedia
RealNetworks (then Progressive Networks) founded the streaming industry as we know it. RealPlayer v1 was launched in 1995 and was the first real-time streaming media player. Video was introduced in RealPlayer 4 in 1997, and the company quickly dominated streaming video as it had done for streaming audio. While there were other formats for distributing audio and video on the Internet, RealNetworks was the innovator and the market share leader for streaming delivery until Windows Media displaced it in the early 2000s.
Historically, the main sources of Real’s revenue were server software and the Plus version of the player software. But competition from full-featured free players like WMP forced Real to put more functionality ...
Get Compression for Great Video and Audio, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
