In this modern age, the discovery of new technologies is leading us to further progress. And the invention of streaming is an unimaginable technology among all. But the major question is “What does Internet Streaming mean exactly?” Well, online streaming is a technology by which we can transmit any music, movies, or any media files through the internet without any interruption.

Did you know?More than 100 million internet users engage in online streaming everyday.

But how does this thing work? Let’s find out; the detailed explanation and exact definition of internet streaming in the next few paragraphs below.

The world streams over a billion hours of content every single day on YouTube alone.

What is Internet Streaming?

Online streaming is a type of technology that refers to media content like audio, video, live recording, or recorded media files delivered to devices through the internet. This technology brings the content near to the people so that people can enjoy the content anywhere anytime they want.

This internet streaming can be possibly done by any of these devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, smart speakers, android TVs, etc.

In 2020, streaming services accounted for 82% of the total internet traffic. It is expected that by 2025, the online streaming will cross the value estimate of $124.6 billion.

How does it work?

By the name itself, we can easily guess that streaming can be only allowed when a user is online or in a simple way, it cannot work without an internet connection. So how does it work basically? Numbers of people believe that it may work exactly the same way how broadcasting does. However, it works in a completely different way.

25% of the live streaming comes through emotional engagement.

As we know, broadcast works as a lot of data exchange using radio signals by encoding and decoding. But here in internet streaming, they bundled up the content as a source file and sent it via the internet.

At the receiving end, the user can download the bundled source file package and enjoy watching it side by side at the same time. If there is any slow internet speed, some delays may occur. This phenomenon is called buffering. The advantage of this internet streaming service is people never download the whole content to watch any content, or they don’t have to wait for it to download.

More than 20% of Facebook videos are live in the last two years.

Every kinds of Internet Streaming

As we have discussed, in the internet streaming facility, people can enjoy music, videos, movies, and live recording videos using streaming devices. So, we can easily differentiate the categories of Internet Streaming according to a certain type. Let’s learn about every type of Internet streaming one by one now.

Streaming Devices and Apps

As we have discussed above, streaming only can be possible through the internet and the support of streaming devices. Devices like internet TV or smart TV, smart home functionality, wireless set-top boxes, multi-room DVR, gaming consoles, personal computers, smart mobile phones, etc are mostly used to do internet streaming.

On the other hand, streaming applications are helping consumers to provide their content ready-to-watch facility. Streaming services like Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Voot, Zee5, etc. are popular all over the world.

Some internet TVs now come with built-in streaming applications like Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Prime Video, etc. so that customers can watch their favourite movies, web series in excellent quality or listen to music.

1. What is Video Streaming?

   Video Streaming is the most popular internet streaming among all. People have daily uploaded billions of billions of hours of videos on every video streaming platform.

   YouTube has the highest source of video content; which is watched by people over 5 billion videos every day.

   In video streaming, the video file is basically uploaded as a package file to a server; that people can access from anywhere at any time while downloading. Many people can stream the same video at the same time but also they can pause, play, or seek the video in advance individually, which doesn’t affect others.

   There are many other video streaming platforms that are popular i.e. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Zee5, etc. Most of them need to pay for consuming the video content. Some famous free video streaming platforms are YouTube, MX player, etc.

2. What is Music Streaming?

   Music Streaming is also one of the coolest internet streaming categories. In a music streaming service, users can listen to that music without storing any copy of that music file. This kind of music streaming platform also comes with the free and paid version of the subscriptions.

   Some popular music streaming platforms are Amazon Prime Music, Spotify, Apple Music, Jio Savaan, Airtel Wynk Music, etc. Now, this type of application has come up with an artificial intelligence update. These applications will track your playing music genre and recommend that most of that music belongs to that same genre; as these apps have billions of music content.

3. What is Live Streaming?

   So, what is live streaming? It is almost the same type as video streaming. Only the difference is, people can start streaming the video or audio content at that same time while the event happens.

   For example, In Facebook live if a user starts broadcasting; if you are a friend of that person, you can start watching that stream immediately. Apart from that, in this COVID19 pandemic, most tech giant companies use this live streaming platform for product launching events to connect with their customers.

   Also many online official meetings, schools, lectures, tuitions, and video calling to our loved ones, all are using live streaming to do the task. Applications like many types of video calling apps, Zoom, Google Meets, etc. are the popular examples of live streaming.

   ‘Chewbacca Mom’ a video uploaded on YouTube in 2016 is the most watched video on Facebook Live with a viewership of over 1.75 million till 2019.

4. What are Streaming Games?

   It is just another modern version of Live Streaming. After the massive success of live streaming, the video gaming industry started pushing the facility of live game streaming in their library package itself. By which the gaming community also gets excited to stream games online.

   You can only possibly play online if you have purchased the game or have the license of that game. Streaming games like counter strike, PUBG, call of duty, etc. multiplayer games are popular in the gaming community. You can stream games through your laptops, computers, gaming consoles, and smartphones also.

Nowadays smart home functionality devices are gaining popularity especially AI technology based speakers like Google Home, Alexa, Apple Homepod, etc.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet Streaming

While each discovery offers numerous benefits, it does bring some drawbacks as well. And we are definitely going to talk about everything here in this article.

Internet streaming benefits

1. The main reason people love internet streaming is that they don’t have to download the whole content to start watching. People can start the video at any time at any point.
2. People can stream the same video and can move forward and backward according to their convenience; which doesn’t affect others streaming or the main source media file.
3. There are no storage issues as it does not take any space to download any content.
4. The video content comes with multiple content qualities; people can change the quality resolutions by themselves or it can automatically detect and serve you a better experience.
5. Video streaming provides content like tutorials, unboxing technology, cooking videos, and much informative content; helps people to learn for free.
6. Some live streaming platforms like Unacademy, Udemy, or more provide online classes which help students to do studies from the best tutors. Live classes help to solve their issues and interact between the teacher and students easily.
7. Live streaming also engages people from every corner of the world.

Problems of Internet Streaming

1. Internet streaming does not offer such major problems but when the internet speed is getting slow then the buffering may occur. Too much buffering also ruins the experience. For example, when you are streaming a movie from a video streaming platform such as Netflix on your internet TV; that movie requires a minimum of 4 to 5 Mbps to download. If the internet speed does not meet the correct level, then buffering comes at that moment.
2. Too much internet streaming can bring addiction; it may cause several physical problems i.e. eyesight weakening; headache, etc. Although applications like YouTube brings the feature to warn users after streaming too much.
3. And, we need to be also very careful about our privacy as it involves the internet. Some applications come with subscription plans which require bank details or credit / debit card details, so we need to be very attentive while sharing credentials.

Final Thoughts

Internet streaming has completely replaced broadcasting and downloading technology over the years. In today’s life, from buying stuff to learning stuff we are totally relying on internet streaming.

We never consider anything until we stream review videos. Amid the COVID19 situation, internet streaming becomes a part of our daily life to get rid of boredom. We cannot imagine our present or the future without online streaming.

Did you know?The average time spent per person on a live stream is 3.5 minutes and for an on-demand video it is 2.8 minutes.