About on-demand and broadcast playlists

You can provide different user experiences depending on whether you make your playlists available through an on-demand or a broadcast publishing point.

If you want your users to have control over the content you reference in a playlist, you can post your playlist to an on-demand publishing point. Users can fast-forward the content, skip to different entries in the playlist, and pause playback, thereby controlling the method by which they receive the content.

In contrast, if you have users connect to a playlist through a broadcast publishing point, they can only receive the stream exactly as dictated by the playlist; they have no control over how they receive content, and they can only start and stop the playback. If users stop the content on their players, the content stream on the broadcast publishing point continues. When a user resumes playing the content by clicking start, the player synchronizes with the playlist that is currently playing, regardless of the point at which the user stopped it.

Note

• 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.

Related topics

• About creating and editing playlists
• Creating and editing offline playlists
• Editing online playlists
• Playlist reference
• Understanding playlists