What is webcasting?

Webcasting is a term used to describe the broadcast of sound, video and multimedia content via a network, such as the public Internet. Also known as netcasting and Internet broadcasting, webcasting is an efficient and cost-effective solution for reaching a large, distributed audience when conventional media delivery (satellite, television, radio, etc) is not practical or possible.

Webcasting uses a technology known as streaming to deliver the content. Media content is acquired at the source (eg, an AGM, conference or concert) and is converted into a digital format. The digitised content is then encoded into small packets of data that can be sent one-at-a-time over a network connection to a streaming server. The server distributes these packets to the webcast audience via the Internet. At the user’s end, a player receives these packets from the server. Due to the nature of the Internet, these packets can take a variety of different routes to the user’s player and can therefore arrive out of order. The player intelligently reassembles the packets into their correct order and then decodes them back into audio and video which is displayed in the player window. The player can be either stand-alone or embedded in a web page (more common) and no special knowledge is required by the user to operate the player. Once the player has decoded and displayed/played a packet, the packet is then deleted and lost forever, ensuring that no memory/hard disk space is used in the process, and the file doesn't remain on the computer.

Today, compression technology enables us to stream high-quality video and near-CD quality audio over a standard dial-up connection, and broadband users can now watch near-DVD quality video streamed via the Internet.