Once upon a time streaming was the symbol for poorly run company's losing millions almost overnight. Born as the bastard stepchild of the dot-com era, few people realized is that streaming just wasn't ready to live up to the marketing hype. Fortunately a lot has changed in the past several years.

Today availability of wide bandwidth internet access in the work place and at home is far more common. The computers of today are hardly taxed by the tasks of delivering and decoding quality audio and video.

Most companys are starting to reevaluate their communications and travel/training priorities. This article may help you understand  how using your existing internet access for quality training, distance learning or media distribution can pay for itself quickly.

	Record an analog source (typically tape) and convert it to one of many digital formats.
	Convert one format to another. Since there are no real "standards" in the digital domain for media type, conversion (transcoding) is almost always needed.
	Automated placement onto remote servers for broadcast, web services or archiving. This include DRM (Digital Rights Management) to protect against unauthorized copies.
	Control and logging of multiple streamed media including (optional) asset management. May also work with shared storage. Content Delivery Networks (CDN) or Digital Delivery Networks (DDN) can be cost effective alternatives.
	Usually a software player that decodes live or file based media back to analog or for viewing.