Difference between Downloading & Streaming Video

I have been listening about the terms Streaming Videos & Downloading Videos from the past few years but never understood what they really mean and where can i see them being implemented in my daily life. Is it hard to understand the differences and can you give me few examples of the same? – Question by a Blog Reader.

Here is a very interesting topic which was asked by one of our readers through email where in he is confused with the words ‘Downloading’ & ‘Streaming’ because at the end he is just viewing the same video, then why are different words used and well in layman’s language this could be the same stuff but technically there is a lot of different in both of these.

There are many reasons this difference would be important to be clarified because if you are using a Download Based Internet Usage plan then you would be fearing that you will be billed everything you view your favourite Youtube video and if each time streaming and downloading is counted towards the download access charges. While you view any Youtube video it comes under the download charges because in that case the video file is being downloaded from the Youtube Servers to your Computer and then is played in the same player.

The Streaming concept is something different where is there is no file but data is sent from another server to your computer. In case of viewing any videos what happens is that the files start downloading to your computer and are stored in your Browser’s cache memory while you start viewing it. If you just start the PLAY button and then click on PAUSE then the file starts downloading with the downloading position being shown on the Player in a different to give you the live status on how much is the data downloaded.

Here is a small screenshot of the Youtube Progress Bar which shows you the real time progress on the download status of the file from their servers to your browser and this is done in background. When its completely done you can directly click on PLAY and watch the video perfectly without any hangings in between since the data is already downloaded. If you have a Slow Internet Connection then the download bar would move slowly rather than the Play one then the video would struck there itself and wait for the download to complete and then continue playing.

When you close the tab after viewing the video and revisiting the same tab after few minutes or hours you will find that the video directly starts loading because the content of the video are already stored in your browser and this is the situation where in you wont be charged for again downloading the video saving your broadband bills. If you close your browser and relaunch it or else Delete your Cache files then for sure you will be losing the downloaded content, following which when you click on the Play Button the video will again be downloaded from youtube servers and you will be again charged for broadband usage.

While Youtube.com works on the Downloading Videos System, Hulu.com which offers similar video sharing service but with super high quality works on Video Streaming System where in when you click on the PLAY button the video is streamed from Hulu servers. In this case there may be a small amount of buffering before the video is played on the player but its not cached and you are left with no option if you restart the video at the end or in the middle because it again starts streaming from the hosting servers. Streaming Videos can cost you a lot in terms of broadband usage bills because everytime you play the videos they are directly transferred from the servers to their player for a fixed period of time and then since there is no cache feature you cannot replay it. The streaming system is not generally recommended because of its lack of features.