Video streaming across wide area networks. Research on technologies for content distribution

This research aims to focus on several aspects of video streaming: compression algorithms, broadcasting daemons, encoding technologies, patenting and licensing issues, secure authentication measures and archiving.

A range of possibilities is to be examined to individuate a viable technology which will be the underlying framework for Wide Area Net- work (WAN) access to the Video Art Collection of Montevideo.

Main requirements are quality of the video playback, standardization and predictable longevity of the compression algorithm adopted. Other parameters we‘ll take into account in our exploration of digital video streaming technologies are: efficiency, costs, compatibility, integration with adopted technologies, independence and freedom to adapt the tools to our needs.

Being the field of research a rapidly evolving ground, this research has to be referred as the current status of technology in year 2006. At the time of writing some promising technologies are still in development and, once they achieved maturity, they might slightly affect our results.