Netscape, 40 Firms In Media Pact

Netscape Communications Corp and Progressive Networks Inc said they and 40 other companies agreed to a proposed standard for delivering video and audio instantaneously over the Internet.

The so-called Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is a set of communications rules for control and delivery of real-time media. It would allow bits of audio or video data to stream through a transmission wire in broadcast fashion and be received by a computer in so-called real time, replacing the need to download the entire video or audio onto a computers hard disk before a user could view or listen to it.

Currently several companies have streaming audio technologies on the market. Some are software, such as Macromedia Incs Shockwave, and others use broadcasting technology, such as Progressive Networks RealAudio.

 

Analysts say the effort to establish a standard protocol could spur development of applications that use the technology, as well as a market for them. With Real Time Streaming Protocol, what they are trying to do is extend streaming as a standard to all sorts of areas, said Dana Blankenhorn, senior online editor at NetGuide, the largest Internet trade magazine.

A number of companies have come out with streaming technologies but they are all a bit different. What Netscape and Progressive are trying to do is at least provide a framework in which these things work together so it ceases to matter what (type of computer operating system) you have. Until now, each vendor of Internet multimedia systems had a different approach, which has led to confusion, said Jerry Michalski, managing editor of Release 1.0, a computer industry newsletter.

This, combined with the impressive group of industry-leading companies that support RTSP, should catalyze streaming media development on the Web, he said. Backers of the new standard include computer industry giants such as Apple Computer Inc., Autodesk Inc.s Kinetix unit, Cisco Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.