What exactly is "RealMedia (G2)" streaming? What advantage does it have over just serving RealMedia files over http?

Streaming RealSystem G2 content allows that content to be viewed or listened to live, and it also prevents users from downloading the content to the local filesystem. It also allows "SureStream" technology, which reads the connection preferences from the users' RealPlayer setup and uses the appropriate bitrate.

For true Real Media streaming you will have to buy a license for the Real Media server (cheapest one I know of is $2000). From what I have been told the benefits to using a Real Media server vs. streaming a Real Media file using http is that the Real Media server can handle more simultaneous streams at once more effiecently. So if you are serious about streaming media and expect to be serving a more than a few streams at once then maybe you should be looking at the Real Media server. If you are going to serve a few files to a limited audience that probably won't be causing several simultaneous streams then using http to stream the file should be sufficient.

If you find Realmedia too expensive, consider using Darwin streaming server, http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/streaming/index.html

Darwin is the best! I found the newer version to be much better than 3. However they are yet to catch up on the docs for 4.0.

Darwin is excellent!

Originally posted by phpjames
Darwin is the best! I found the newer version to be much better than 3. However they are yet to catch up on the docs for 4.0.

Darwin is excellent!

Yes, but too bad, they haven't released the new version of the player. I still can't stream MP4 videos, sorensen is not an option as it is not available for Linux.

How hard is Darwin to set up for a host and if it does what
it can why don't more hosts use this technology. I mean
Open Source = FREE:D
Real Media = $$$$:bawling:

Does Darwin stream Real Player as well (.rm/ram files) or
only .mov....