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 later 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.
Notes