24

Real Networks

24.1 Introducing Real Networks Media

The Real Networks story began with the delivery of audio at low bit rates in the mid-1990s, when the company was called Progressive Networks. This became attractive to music-based Web sites and radio stations all over the world, which started to live-encode their programs and broadcast them on the Internet.

In 1997 the first examples of streamed video were delivered, and we were all astonished by this low-bit-rate, low-quality, postage-stamp-sized video at very jerky frame rates. Nevertheless, it was the precursor of the present online video services. Some experts consider this to be the future of TV delivery. There were a few other small companies doing similar work during the 1990s, but ...

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