Apple’s HLS has been developed for several years and has been widely adopted by the industry. Despite its name, Adobe’s HDS cannot be used with ordinary HTTP servers, so it has not been widely used. Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming (MSS) was an early contender and was used in the 2008 Olympics, but it has since been discontinued. Most HTTP Streaming Protocols have been developed as proprietary transmission methods and have unique differences between them. The Difference Between HTTP Streaming Protocols On the viewer (client) side, an Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) video player uses an algorithm to automatically select the highest quality version that can be downloaded which will allow playback without stalls or buffering. With ABS, video is made available in multiple bitrates (quality/file sizes) so that the content is viewable in high quality to users with large bandwidth and lower quality to those with restricted or limited bandwidth. ABS allows the viewer to dynamically receive the highest quality video that is available based on his/her device’s capabilities and potentially fluctuating network connection. HTTP streaming also paved the way for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABS). Since HTTP is used by most of the content on the internet, distribution and scaling is widely available, and no special firewall modifications are required in most cases. HTTP-based streaming allows audio/video to be delivered using regular web servers (as opposed to streaming servers which are required for RTMP).

MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH).

Instead, for last-mile delivery, the industry turned to modern streaming methods which offer HTTP delivery such as: iOS devices), and it will soon be deprecated as Adobe has announced the end of Flash Player. However, receiving and playing video with RTMP is no longer supported on many endpoints (e.g. This works best for streaming to a small audience from a dedicated media server.

The second use case for RTMP is between a server and a viewer’s device utilizing Flash Player. This is known as first-mile delivery, or video contribution. First is using RTMP to transmit video between an encoder and server. RTMP uses a persistent (continuous) TCP connection to stream fragments of audio and video from a source to a single destination. RTMP, or Real-time Messaging Protocol, was originally created by Macromedia (now Adobe) in 2002 as a method for streaming video and audio over the internet. What is RTMP: First & Last Mile Video Delivery Proprietary standards have tried to fill the gap, but they have not allowed for proper interoperability between servers and devices, creating fragmentation that further frustrates the issue. Limitations of archaic video streaming techniques have crippled technology growth in providing reliable, secure, and flexible video transmission. Buffering wheels, jitters, and quality loss is common, even on “fast” connections.

We’ve all faced the consequences of poor video streaming. Unfortunately, while demand for online video has grown, techniques to stream have largely been left in the ’90s. By next year, Cisco estimates that over 82% of IP traffic will be video. Recent studies find that consumers spend an average of 83 minutes per day watching online video. It’s no surprise that online live video streaming has become more and more popular.

Ivideon client vs server