Streaming is the process of taking large files, breaking them into smaller pieces and sending them to their destination where they are recompiled as they arrive, providing an audio, video or animated broadcast over the net. Since its introduction in 1995 thousands of Web sites have taken advantage of the technique to broadcast everything from television news to teaching seminars and music.

RealNetworks is the pioneer of streaming media, the technique by which audio, video and animations can be viewed in real or near real time over the Internet. Real was not only the first to offer software to play various media on the Internet, but it built up a major business by providing the equipment to create the media and then broadcast it. Like Netscape and Internet Explorer it used the Internet as its primary form of distribution and since 1995, millions of RealPlayers have been downloaded. RealPlayer was provided as a plug-in for either Netscape or Internet Explorer.

There were rumours at one stage of Microsoft taking over the company but talks ended in acrimony and Microsoft nowadays pushes its own Windows MediaPlayer rather than RealPlayer. It is also receiving competition from Apple's new QuickTime 4.0. However, RealPlayer has a lot of loyal users who prefer it as their default media player.

RealNetworks continues to provide a variety of free software including its popular RealPlayer G2 which offers a up to 75 Internet channels covering news, business, techno, entertainment and music. It also has moved with the times and included the popular MP3 as one of the file formats it can play.

The G2 is like having a TV set on the World Wide Web. However, it does have some problems. The quality of streaming video is very dependent on bandwidth - the faster your modem the better the quality - however, even with a 56k modem it is still fairly ordinary. And it gets worse at peak times on the net when RealPlayer constantly pauses while it buffers sufficient data to continue playing.

It is particularly noticeable when streaming live video, but the size of the problem varies from site to site and the type of file being streamed. For example the popular MP3 format streams much better than other audio files.
RealPlayer Plus G2 is a much more sophisticated version of the free software. It is like the difference between a miniature TV/radio and a home theatre system. Apart from the standard channel system it also offers a range of preset sites - mostly radio stations - that are constantly streaming across the net.

It suffers far less from the break up caused by net congestion thanks to the addition of an application called Perfect Play. While Perfect Play takes longer to start playing a clip, it is able to do so - most of the time - without the constant interruptions you might otherwise suffer.

RealPlayer Plus G2 also comes with a graphic equaliser, audio analyser and controls for adjusting the contrast, brightness, colour level, tint and sharpness of video and animations, and it really comes into its own if you have a decent sound system on your PC. Combine it with a SoundBlaster Live!, a subwoofer and surround sound speakers and you really have something.

RealPlayer Plus is really a control centre for a lot of Real applications, and one of the first things worth doing is hitting the upgrade button and downloading some of the free extra plug-ins that will not only increase the range of files RealPlayer can play, but increase the number of things you can do with it.

With a combination of RealPix, RealText and RealVideo you are able to play multiple clips simultaneously as a single presentation. With RealJukeBox you can organise and play MP3 files that have been downloaded to your hard drive, or set the order of tracks you want to play from an audio CD.

RealNetworks recently opened an office in Australia and that hopefully will lead to a greater list of Australian channels and sites streaming audio and/or video. In the meantime, there are plenty of good sites on the net to try out RealPlayer, and if you have an ISDN line or a cable modem you are in for a real treat.