Advanced Streaming Format

How does ASF relate to newer formats such as VXF, RA, RMFF, and VIV?

ASF is the result of a natural evolutionary process that began with older formats such as AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and QuickTime, and continued with the newer multimedia streaming formats such as VXF, RA, RMFF, and VIV. It is like the coming together of tributaries to form a single, mighty river; the merging of multiple dialects to form a single, common language.

If digital multimedia today was a country, it would be one of those quaint, backwater societies in which a different dialect is spoken in every province. Fodor's would write up digital multimedia as an adventurous destination for the hardy and intrepid tourist. Certainly, history is replete with examples of societies operating under multiple different languages. But these examples do not include those societies that emerged as empires, the influence and cultures of which traversed the known world. Such empires have done so only under the banner of a single language. Before Hollywood and Rock 'n Roll carried American English around the globe, the sun set upon neither the British Empire nor the King's English. Before Pax Romana saw Irish monks reciting the liturgy in Latin, Alexander was spreading the Hellenic tongue to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Rapidly growing global societies operate under one language. The same is true for pervasive technologies.

Digital multimedia is just such a pervasive technology. It is destined to circle the globe on the highways of the Internet. Digital multimedia will do so under the banner of a single language. That language is ASF.

1994 witnessed the emergence of the Internet as we know it today. Soon thereafter, the initial multimedia streaming companies were born. Looking out at the multimedia world of the day, these new companies saw only AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, and the other older multimedia formats. These older formats had been developed before the explosion of the Internet and they were not up to the demands of this new world.

Accordingly, the new streaming companies were compelled to develop their own multimedia streaming file formats. In rapid succession, there emerged a veritable alphabet soup of multimedia streaming file formats: VXF, RA, RMFF, VIV, and so on. Each format tackled one set or another of the problems brought on by streaming. Each was proprietary and each was incompatible with the others.

The significance of ASF to the digital multimedia community is demonstrated by how ASF is being formed. Among the dozens of companies participating in the definition of ASF are the core media streaming companies. These include Progressive Networks, Vivo, VXtreme, VDOnet, and Microsoft -- the very companies that spawned the earliest successful proprietary multimedia streaming formats. ASF embodies the collective learning acquired by all of the key media streaming players over the past few years. As such, ASF is the result of the natural evolution of VXF, RA, RMFF, VIV, and all the other multimedia streaming formats. Soon, everyone will be speaking ASF, and digital multimedia will cover the globe.