What is the Difference between Streaming and Progressive download?
Streaming: Streaming delivers media in real-time over the internet. No file is downloaded to the hard drive of your audience. The file is played, but not stored. If the recipient’s Internet connection is not fast enough to receive all of the packets in the file, they are dropped and the quality of the playback is compromised. Progressive: Progressive download saves the file to your viewer’s hard drive. This ensures the highest quality playback possible regardless of the connection speed of your viewer. Some progressive download media types can be set to ‘Fast Start’. Media set to ‘Fast Start’ begins to play as soon as enough of the file resides on your viewer’s hard drive. In general, viewers with slower connections will need to wait longer for progressive download media to begin playing due to their lower bandwidth when compared with streaming media compressed to an appropriate data rate.
