Media Types
There are many types of media you'd want to stream to a display device, but it mostly boils down to these 5 broad categories:- Netflix, Amazon-Video, and other subscription based VOD services
- Youtube, Vimeo, and many others like them, free/ad-supported
- Live TV, maybe using a subscription card, and then usually a dedicated decoder device
- Other live sources, surveillance cams, web cams, desktop streams, video conferences
- Stored content on devices in your own network and/or under your control, or neither.
They each come with a set of characteristics and (associated) challenges:
Subscription based VOD services
- Some of your display devices may have a dedicated app for that.
- Some combinations of browsers/OSs/platform/etc can play in the browser.
- Content selection on the various platforms differs, and getting worse
- External streaming services, etc.mostly out of your control.
- internal sources
- Live sources with control over the output formats/protocols
- Live sources with less or no control over the output
- Stored content on devices capable of transcoding (format/codec changes)
(more to come soon)
