About Play While Archiving

Applies To: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2

Archiving allows you to save the output of a broadcast publishing point to a Windows Media file. This feature provides a way to make permanent records of live broadcasts. In an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) scenario, however, archiving has a number of potential uses beyond simple storage, including the ability to automate the rebroadcast of a stream for different time zones.

The Play While Archiving feature can be used to allow clients to read from archived files as the server writes to them, allowing you to easily set up a scenario in which viewers can play a live broadcast stream from the beginning before a broadcast has finished. For example, a viewer who tunes in 20 minutes late to watch a live broadcast can be given the choice of either picking up the live broadcast in progress or viewing a rebroadcast from the beginning with a 20-minute delay.

Note

You can use the Play While Archiving feature in the WMS Cache/Proxy plug-in to read from a file in its cache while it also writes to the file. Play While Archiving, therefore, can increase the number of cache hits—the number of users who can stream from the cache/proxy server instead of the origin server.

In This Section

Rebroadcasting archived content

Rebroadcasting archived content (live replay)

Rebroadcasting archived content (broadcast delay)

See Also

Other Resources

Caching and Proxying Content with Windows Media Services 2008