Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #456 4/24/2019


Question: What is streaming?

Answer:

Streaming is where information is sent across the Internet in a live format. You will hear people streaming events and also some games.

Normally you look at items and they are put out in recorded format. With streaming the information is being sent across live so you are watching it as it occurs.

Streaming does have more in it as it is sent so it does require faster download and upload speeds although most people can receive fine through their Internet connection on their laptops and desktops PCs as most have at least 20mbps download. Slower may give you quality issues. However on phones if you do not have 3G or better 4G you may find it is not arriving in real good quality.

Uploading the streaming does require a little faster than some have as to have decent quality you will need at least a 5-10mbps upload speed.

I use streaming to have online sessions with my students. I also used streaming for a panel I was on last fall that was watched internationally live about computer security. I also use it to stream church services at First United Methodist in Swainsboro. In the case of the church we stream using Facebook, although I have tried it on YouTube also and it worked. Facebook and Google are easy to do streaming on. You will have to activate your account for doing live posts. With Facebook if it is a group account only administrators can do live posts which is streaming. Then when I stream I have the sound and video going to the computer and I click a box labeled Live where I would make posts and it begins a stream and Facebook will automatically record. So people can watch live or the recording later.

Streaming makes many events we may not be able to attend live, where we can actually watch it live. Most people will watch streaming events, while only a few will be sending the streaming event, although in a few more years it will probably grow quite common for most people to upload streams. Streaming was not really available until we got faster Internet speeds and the bandwidth grew so that it would not bog everything else.