The four facets of multimedia streaming

Recent advances in media coding techniques and network access technologies have made multimedia streaming practicable and affordable in both fixed and mobile environments. Multimedia streaming services from anywhere and at anytime is fast becoming a reality. This chapter provides a snapshot of the facets involved in delivering multimedia streaming contents to the end user’s terminal. The facets discussed in the chapter extend from the streaming paradigms, media coding techniques, the network support for multimedia streaming services to the techniques used to evaluate the user’s quality of experience for multimedia streaming applications. Each facet is also discussed for both fixed and mobile environments.