Streaming Video
This feature provides the ability to play video content. While many phones can play downloaded, pre-recorded video content, "streaming" allows near-immediate playback as the video content is sent over the network, instead of waiting for a full video file to download first. This permits real-time viewing of live event and news broadcasts.
Since video is data-intensive, the performance of this feature depends on the speed of the data connection.
Some streaming video services can only be viewed via the company's own app(s).
Open standards also exist. There are various encoding technologies and protocols for streaming video. The streaming video player / viewer software on the phone must be compatible with the format of the video stream.
