I am looking to put streaming media on my server ..... any ideas as to what i need and the best platofrms to do this with are ?

Any help much appreciated

:)

What OS are you looking to use and what type of media are you looking to stream?

My recommendation is , if you want to use quicktime streaming, is to use the Mac OS X Server (for macintosh) with the built in QuickTime Streaming Server..but thats if you are using Mac (which your probably not) :)

Darwin Streaming Server works well and its free/open source. http://www.opensource.apple.com//projects/streaming/
It is for streaming QuickTime and it works on linux, in fact I used it on my raq way back when.

I would personally recommed Real Streaming. You'll need the Producer and Server from realnetworks.com - they dont come cheap (free versions "basic" are available) but if you're serious about streaming.....;)

Id suggest real server too, you can get the server for a low price if you only have a few connections, but i believe you need to pay for the producer that encodes the stream to the server.

we have problems with real producer when it gets disconnected from the server there is no auto reconnect :-( - therefore you must be near it at all times to make sure it doesnt disconnect.

It also needs a huge processor to encode the stream or the machine dies and tells you its run out of resources.

If you are looking for a cheap/free solution id suggest creating a shoutcast stream - afaik its free and you only need WinAmp to encode the stream with the shoutcast client, this encodes the stream and you then have the shoutcast server on your servers that people connect to, good thing is it supports auto reconnect.

There are also downsides to shoutcast but i wont go into them now! :D

Originally posted by xtstrike
we have problems with real producer when it gets disconnected from the server there is no auto reconnect :-( - therefore you must be near it at all times to make sure it doesnt disconnect.


Yeah, Ive got RealProducer G2 Plus (6.x) and Ive noticed that sometimes :/

Originally posted by xtstrike
It also needs a huge processor to encode the stream or the machine dies and tells you its run out of resources.


I tried to run the producer on my old P166MMX with 64meg of ram - hahaha - that was fun :) Works fine on my P3 1Ghz tho, cant remember the specifications required for real producer although I know that real server will work on anything up from something like a 200Mhz or above.

Originally posted by xtstrike
There are also downsides to shoutcast but i wont go into them now! :D

I tried shoutcast, its a simple system - but if your target audience is 56k users and above.......you might as well not bother :)

I think Windows Media Services or Apple Darwin are about the best out there right now. Real used to be, but like everyone says it eats up to much resources. Has anyone compared the three before?

Winmedia is nice :) The reason Im not using it though is because (to my knowledge) it (the winmedia server) cant be used on a Linux box ;)