Get Real-Time

Live RealAudio made its public debut on September 5, 1995, with the broadcast of the Seattle Mariners-New York Yankees baseball game. ABC Radio News was the first to provide live newscasts on the Internet.

The RealAudio player is bundled with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Spry Mosaic, and Spyglass Enhanced Mosaic. Users have downloaded more than ha lf a million players, and there are nearly 200 Web sites using RealAudio.

The Live RealAudio System server software runs on Pentium PCs (with a sound card) under Windows 95 or Windows NT. RealAudio servers can transmit to other secondary servers in order to multiply the number of simultaneous users. The server's architecture serves mu ltiple clients without running an additional process for each connection; this reduces the load on the host machine. Multiple servers can run on the host. RealAudio version 2.0 servers automatically scale output quality to the user's bandwidth, from 14.4 Kbps to ISDN.

RealAudio 2.0 also allows you to embed codes (including URLs) in a data stream. You can construct applications that perform preprogrammed actions during transmission. One possibility is to show compressed still images during audio transmission, like a narrated slide show. Another possibility, during sports play-by-play, would be to bring a player's statistics up on screen. The RealAudio data stream, with its time-based structure, acts as the timer or clock for events to occur. An open API allows third-party developers to create new compression algorithms and applications.

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RealAudio Goes Live

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