Appendix B. Audio Format Comparison
The following tables will help you select the web audio broadcasting format appropriate for your needs.
RealMedia
Capability |
Rating |
---|---|
Browser compatibility and percent of browsers with Plug-in |
Excellent. |
Interactive sound design capabilities |
Fair. Format is designed primarily for streaming media. Simple synchronized media presentations such as slide shows, audio with moving text, captions, and pictures. |
Software cost for encoding and streaming |
Free to $695 to $21,595+. Basic Server with 25 simultaneous streams is free. Basic Server Plus (60 streams) costs $695. The full-featured Internet Solutions Server (400 streams) costs $21,595. |
Level of documentation and support |
Outstanding. |
Audio encoding and content generation |
Easy. |
Audio authoring and delivery |
Medium to Easy. Medium difficulty to set up dedicated RealServer. Easy to post RealAudio files on standard web server for playback without bandwidth negotiation and other dedicated server features, etc. |
Audio fidelity and compression |
Excellent. |
Low-bandwidth performance |
Good/Excellent. RealNetworks’ RealServer provides bandwidth negotiation for all types of bandwidth connections from 14.4 Kbps modems to T1 lines. RealMedia is designed to look at the user connection speed and then serve a stream that is optimized for that user’s connection. |
Server performance and quality of software tools for large-scale streaming |
Outstanding—RealServer. RealNetworks has the most sophisticated servers, ... |
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