Using on-demand publishing points
Streaming content from an on-demand publishing point is best suited for scenarios in which you want users to be able to control playback of the content that is being streamed. This type of publishing point is most often used to host content sourced from files, playlists, or directories. When a client connects to the publishing point, the content starts at the beginning and the end-user can use the playback controls on the Player to pause, fast-forward, rewind, skip between items in a playlist, or stop.
An on-demand publishing point streams content only when a client is connected to receive the stream. Content streamed from an on-demand publishing point is always delivered as a unicast stream, which means that the server maintains a separate connection with each client.
An on-demand publishing point can also be used to deliver a broadcast stream from an encoder, a remote server, or another publishing point. Any of these can be selected as the sole source of content or included as part of a content playlist. When content originates from a source other than the Windows Media server, the user cannot use the playback controls on the Player to pause, fast-forward, rewind, skip items in a playlist, or stop.
Notes
- The ability to fast-forward, skip, rewind, and pause while playing content from a server-side playlist is only supported by Windows Media Player 9 Series or a player that uses the Windows Media Player 9 Series ActiveX control. Users that are connecting with a previous version of the Player will not be able to control the playback of the content in the server-side playlist. If these users stop and then restart the Player, playback will start from the beginning of the playlist.
- If your publishing point is accessing files on a computer running Windows 2000 Server as a source of content, you may have difficulty streaming the content due to differences in the way that Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 handle user account authorization and privileges. If the two computers are members of the same domain, on-demand publishing points that have the WMS NTFS ACL Authorization plug-in enabled and attempt to retrieve content from a computer running Windows 2000 Server will cause remote clients to receive an "Access denied" error message. Local clients, such as the Test stream feature of Windows Media Services, are not affected. If the two computers are not members of the same domain, see To access content on a computer running Windows 2000 Server.
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