Thanks for the reply!

I did not know about Advanced Fast Start. I hope someone from the Silverlight crew could chime in on if this will be supported, or any other similiar mechanism.

That being said, the comment about low latency streams not being viable. I think it depends on the content and situation for your stream. I agree webcasts etc do not fit well in this manner because a webcast is pretty useless if the stream is not clear and concise.

On the other hand, there are situations where quality of stream being a trade off for real time is preferred. In my opinion this should be supported and the person putting on the stream should have this choice to make the trade off rather than having no choice.

However there are cases where a lower bitrate / frames dropping / audio dropping is acceptable if the network condition is poor to ensure real time rather than the stream getting further delayed over time.

Flash Media Server is great in this respect. Not only can I develop the server side code to alter this, you can also code the client side end to be dynamic. There are many articles about how to use ActionScript to enable a dynamic buffer where it enables "fast start" but also then further extends the buffer dynamically if the bandwidth is there to surge ahead and fill a larger buffer.

This is great for enabling real time streams but also allows you to ensure broadcast quality if the bandwidth is available by having an extended buffer so if the connection lowers temporarily you have a buffer available.

As mentioned since this is all possible programatically the developer can choose their route to take for the streaming solution. Choice is good. I don't like when companies try and assume there is only one use and force a non-flexible technology. This usually ends up making people wanting to do custom uses go another route.

Let me give an example for our company.

We love .NET technologies, and Windows Media.
We don't enjoy developing in Flash & ActionScript.
We could implement the same technology with WM Player ActiveX, WM Encoder ActiveX, WMS.

However because the actual streaming aspect isn't very customizable on how it behaves like we can do in ActionScript by dynamically altering buffers, connections, bitrates on the fly etc and do the same in the Flash client side, we had to go this route.

I am hoping this is different in Silverlight.

This is also a far stretch but I hope Silverlight sometime in the future supports in the player encoding/streaming out as well. Flash player this is a GREAT advantage. Nobody has to run a stand alone encoding program to stream their video feed etc. We simply leverage Flash's built in capabilities in the player. Although I don't expect Silverlight to do that anytime soon, it would be a great bonus.

This is just a bonus for now though. First and foremost if it can stream low latency along with WMS somehow and allow us to have the flexibility programatically for what is going on behind the scenes this would be great.

Wow that was long sorry ;)

Thanks and take care.