To read this code tutorial in its entirety, please visit ASPFree.com: HTTP STREAMING with silverlight

If you've worked with Rich Media and Rich Internet Application platforms such as Silverlight or Flash, you're probably familiar with the difference between a true HTTP streaming system and a browser-caching system. In case you're not, the basic breakdown is that a true media streaming doesn't cache in the browser...rather it communicates directly with the RIA player and delivers data directly to the application rather than downloading the entirety of media content before playing and/or caching the media in the browser.

Most true streaming media requires some sort of streaming server such as Flash Remote Server, Red 5 or Brightcove.

Now, down to the brass tacks, so to speak. The question of how to bypass the browser's cache and truly stream media to a SilverLight 4 player was asked by one of our readers. Our diligent tech research team (well really one person) did some digging and came up with a thread from the Silverlight forums at Microsoft. In short, the answer is no-- SilverLight does not have those capabilities. This puts a lot of pressure on media-intensive applications to find a work-around. The ramifications are that, if you pay for bandwidth on a per MB or GB basis, using this method of streaming will cause the media to constantly stream and, whether someone watches the media in its entirety or just a piece, the entire media file is sent to the browser cache. That will jack up the prices of your bandwidth if you're not careful.

Sorry, Dan. I wish we had better news for you. Hopefully, Microsoft is reading and will work better streaming ability into the next revision of SL...or it definitely gets put at a disadvantage especially in the face of HTML5 and built-in media support in browsers going forward.

"My Streaming server(FFSERVER) streams through mediaplayer activeX control/plugin without downloading media(ex: .mp3) content into browser cache.
ex: http://www.example.com:8090/1.mp3
Is Silverlight provides streaming through http? wouthout downloading media content.
Does anyone give me feedback on this?
Note: some how solved clientaccesspolicy.xml with my streaming server(ffserver).
accessing clientaccesspolicy.xml from different ports i.e other than 80, for ex: http://www.example.com:8090/1.mp3"

Re: HTTP STREAMING with silverlight
07-26-2010 10:40 AM |
Aha. Then:

justindian2020: Is Silverlight provides streaming through http? wouthout downloading media content.