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Webcasting.HA WL040/Bidgolio-Vol I WL040-Sample.cls September 15, 2003 8:50 Char Count= 0
WebcastingWebcasting
Louisa Ha,Bowling Green State UniversityIntroduction 674
Definition of Webcasting 674
Reasons for Using Webcasting and
Significance of Webcasting to the Internet
and E-commerce World 674
Examples of Webcasting 675
Types of Webcasting 677
Push Technology 677
On-Demand 679
Live Streaming 679
Three Levels of Webcasting 680
Technical Standards and Protocols
of Webcasting 680
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)
Standards 680
ISO (International Standards Organization)
Standards 681
ITU (International Telecommunications Union)
Standards 681World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Standards 682
Proprietary Protocols 682
State of the Radio Webcasting Industry 682
State of the Television Webcasting Industry 682
Major Players in the Webcasting Industry 683
Problems and Issues in Webcasting 683
Cost of Digital Content and Copyright Issues 683
Competition for Audience with Offline
Media 684
Broadband Access and Speed of File
Delivery 684
Development of Webcasting Content 684
Regulatory Issues in Webcasting 684
Webcasting around the Globe 685
Conclusion 685
Glossary 685
Cross References 686
References 686INTRODUCTION
Definition of Webcasting
Webcasting is the delivery of media contents and any digi-
tal information in various formats such as texts, graphics,
and audio and video files on the World Wide Web to In-
ternet users. This definition states the two characteristics
of webcasting:(1) The recipients of webcasts must have Internet access
to receive the content.
(2) The content of webcasts can range from simple text to
rich media files with multimedia capabilities.Webcasting includes unicast (which serves a multimedia
file in real time to a single user) and multicast (which al-
lows many users to receive the Internet data streams at the
same time with special software and hardware installed
at different connections on the Internet).
There are many other terms commonly used to refer
to webcasting as well. For example, cybercasting is
synonymous with webcasting. Another common term is
Internet radio or Web radio. However, Web radio refers
to one type of webcasting that uses a radio station format
and provides primarily audio files. Some of the Web radio
stations only broadcast on the Internet, while others
broadcast content from their offline radio station counter-
parts. Apart from audio content, Internet radio stations
display texts and visuals such as photos of the show hosts
and the playlist of the show. Several sites such as Yahoo!’s
Launch (http://launch.yahoo.com/), flip2it.com (http://
http://www.flip2it.com/schedule.asp?webcaster), Angelfire Ra-
dio (http://www.angelfireradio.com/search.html), and
Classical Live Online Radio (http://www.classicalwebcast.
com/start.htm) provide listings of Internet-only webcasts.Reasons for Using Webcasting and
Significance of Webcasting to the
Internet and E-commerce World
Webcasting offers many benefits to individuals and orga-
nizations that need to disseminate information and con-
tent. The interactivity of computers allows the personal-
ization and customization of information to consumers
with great ease. Webcasting can deliver contents to the
mass audience via the Internet and also to targeted audi-
ence via an intranet, an extranet, or on a subscription ba-
sis on the Internet. In addition, the Internet can transmit
contents instantly to anywhere with Internet access, and
if only nonmultimedia content is being webcast, the cost
of webcasting is generally lower than the cost of a televi-
sion or radio broadcast. Video webcasting, however, can
be an expensive proposition because of the large server
space and bandwidth required. The program length, au-
dience number, and transmission speed determine how
much server space and bandwidth are needed. The cost of
delivering one 30-minute video webcast to 100,000 people
can run from US$12,500 for a live webcast and US$9,500
monthly for an on-demand webcast. This price does not
include the costs of overhead, production, promotion, and
marketing involved to make a webcast successful.
Mass media, businesses, and individuals who want to
have voices on certain issues and provide electronic media
content to a geographically diverse audience use webcast-
ing as an alternative content delivery medium. To estab-
lished media such as broadcast and cable TV networks,
webcasting means opening the battlefront to another new
medium against competitors and increasing the value of
their media content. Webcasting also means less reliance
on intermediaries such as cable system operators or local
broadcast TV stations (Ha and Chan-Olmsted, 2001). To674