With the popularization of the Internet, the demand of audio and video transform increases day by day. Many TV broadcast media wish to pubulish their audio and video programs online. However, audio and video files are always very big in size no matter in transform or storage. In nowadays limited network band condition, it is indeed a awful thing that the time of single multi-media file transform lasts for hours or even longer. To some extent, the Media Streaming Technology greatly changes and improves the awful media trandform conditions online.

Tranditional media transform way is to fully download the media file and then play, which will cost serveral minutes or even hours for downloading. However, media streaming technology adopts the streaming for transforming the media files. That is, server transforms audio and video data to users. After several sec¡¯s startup delay, users can see the programs and there is no need to wait for the whole file to be downloaded fully. Media files are playing on the screen while remaining parts are still downloading from the server.

Now, there are two main formats of media streaming technology:

1. Microsoft ASF(Advanced Stream Format). This kind of files are postfixed with .asf and .wmv. The corresponding media player is Microsoft Media Player.
2. RealMedia from RealNetworks Company. This format includes RealAudio, RealVideo and RealFlash and files are postfixed with .rm and .rmvb. The corresponding media player is RealPlayer from RealNetworks Company.

Unlike many video broadcast and video on demand system only support single media format, Synacast System can successfully support above two ,media formats: RealMedia and ASF.