Panther Express Clears Away the Streaming Video Fog

Progressive Download or Streaming - Which is Best for Your Video Business

NEW YORK, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Panther Express, a leading global
provider of high-performance content delivery services, today announced their
guide to efficiently delivering online video. Many companies and technical
staff struggle with choosing between the advantages and features associated
with the two main flavors of video delivery - progressive download and
streaming. Now that many of the features first associated with streaming are
available through Panther with progressive download, the choice is now simple.
"Most end users cannot tell the difference between the video delivered by
progressive download and that delivered via a streaming video server," said
Steve Liddell, CEO of Panther Express. "It all streams. It is not until you
look very carefully at video player functions like how the navigation actually
works (rewind and fast forward), that there is a difference."
Most Internet Video is delivered by progressive download. For example,
YouTube video is delivered by progressive download. According to comScore
Video Matrix, YouTube originates over 34% of all video delivered by US content
providers. Our analysis of the top video sites has revealed that over 65% of
video traffic, and over 55% of sites are using progressive download.
Panther Express's network is based on over 10 years high performance HTTP
delivery and is built upon today's Internet technologies and architectures,
not that of a decade ago. For example, years ago, the only acceptable way to
deliver video was via streaming protocols such as RTSP, RTP, or RTCP that
required proprietary players and expensive servers. Often referred to as
Streaming Video, these solutions were costly and did not scale well but
offered more functionality at the time. Yet, as technology has evolved, there
was a wholesale migration towards to a new way of delivering video delivery
via the standard HTTP protocol (often referred to as Progressive Download).
Less expensive, it also scales well. This shift has occurred due to customer
acceptance once the technology evolved to include many of the features that
were once only possible with "true" streaming protocols.
By using metadata attached to encoded FLV files, Progressive Download can
now allow users full seek and navigation at any time without requiring full
file download. By using bandwidth throttling (specify bit rate that files
should be delivered at), it is now possible to deliver only the amount of
video that will be viewed, preventing wasted bandwidth. To maximize security,
no-cache headers can be used to prevent browsers from storing content in cache
and further DRM protection is easily available from partners.
There are many old misconceptions about progressive download and streaming
video. For an up to date look at the reality of both, plus a comparison of
each format's features, please check out our free guide to "Delivering
Internet Video" - email us pr@pantherexpress.net for a copy.
About Panther Express
Panther Express Corp. is the industry's best value CDN solution - a high-
performance content delivery network (CDN) with an innovative low-cost
infrastructure. Founded in 2005 by former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan and
DoubleClick Co-founder and former CTO Dwight Merriman, Panther Express ensures
rapid, reliable and scalable performance to gaming, video, e-commerce,
webhosting, news, blogs and Web 2.0 Internet sites worldwide. Panther Express
is privately held and based in New York. Panther Express has over two years
of experience in content delivery with over 300 customers using our solutions
every day. www.pantherexpress.net
For more information contact Panther Express at 40 West 20th Street, New
York, New York 10011
Contact:
Judy Baliman, Panther Express
jbaliman@pantherexpress.net
646-747-0941

SOURCE Panther Express

Judy Baliman, Panther Express, +1-646-747-0941, jbaliman@pantherexpress.net