Beyond simple text and pictures, the Internet offers a true multimedia experience. Broadcasts with audio, video, and animation are eye-catching and offer an innovative way to communicate with viewers. WorldCom Media Streaming Services allow you to create innovative multimedia business and entertainment applications. Streaming is the term used for media files that begin playing while they are being transmitted to the player, unlike conventional files that must be downloaded in their entirety. The simple answer is time.
Media files are usually quite large and take more time to download.
A 30-minute video for example, may take hours to download. ASF files solve the problem of long download times by starting playback almost immediately, while the data is being transmitted. As the name streaming implies, ASF files flow like a stream. Rather than picking up and sending an entire file at once, ASF files send the first part of an audio or video clip and while that is playing, the rest of the data flows down to arrive exactly when it needs to be played. To ensure that playback is smooth and uninterrupted, the player collects a small backlog of data, called a buffer, before it actually starts playing.