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Streaming content from a broadcast publishing point is best suited for scenarios in which you want to create an experience similar to viewing a television program—the content is controlled and streamed at the point of origin or the server. This type of publishing point is most often used to deliver live streams from encoders, remote servers, or other broadcast publishing points. When a client connects to a broadcast publishing point, the client is joining a broadcast that is already underway. For example, if a company-wide meeting is broadcast at 10:00 A.M., clients connecting at 10:18 A.M. have missed the first 18 minutes of the meeting. A client can start and stop the stream, but cannot pause, fast-forward, rewind, or skip.
You can also stream files and playlists of files on a broadcast publishing point. When they are sourced by a broadcast publishing point, the file or playlist is sent as a broadcast stream by the server and the player cannot control playback as it can with an on-demand stream. The user experience is just like that of receiving a broadcast of a live encoded stream; the client begins playing the stream in progress.
Typically, a broadcast publishing point streams as soon as it is started and then continues until it is stopped or the content finishes. However, you can configure a broadcast publishing point to start and run automatically only if one or more clients are connected. By doing so, network and server resources are saved when no clients are connected. You can also configure a broadcast publishing point to start automatically when a Windows Media server is started. For example, if a power interruption causes a Windows Media server to restart, all broadcast publishing points can begin running automatically after the server starts.
You can deliver content from a broadcast publishing point as either a unicast or multicast stream. You can save the stream from a broadcast publishing point as an archive file and then offer the file to end-users as an on-demand replay of the original broadcast. For more information, see Archiving content.
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