In the process, we discovered that the Web is a powerful interface to applications and services as well as a tool for collaboration. Our media gateway appears to the user as a series of HTML pages culminating in a form that leads to video display. Several media processing applications are available, including live video or television viewers, and a video file browser. The pages act as a navigational interface to the application, using forms to select program options. When a form is submitted, an application appears as though an external viewer were spawned, but without a downloading delay.
Scripts customize the pages to reflect available resources and characteristics of the client.
Video is distributed using the X Window System, and audio is distributed with AudioFile, for those who have it installed. This approach obviates the need for time-consuming downloads of video files and special viewers installed at the client site. It extends the Web to encompass media that do not fit the HTTP model of data transport. We use a cluster of a dozen workstations to serve video. A single supervisor machine dispatches jobs to the appropriate video servers.