Pacific Online hosting accounts support all features of Windows Media Services except live streaming. Windows Media Services uses specialized streaming media software to distribute audio and video content over the web. A streaming server is more efficient and flexible than web server streaming, resulting in an improved end user experience. For more information on streaming methods see Microsoft's article Web Server vs. Streaming Server.

To setup your account for streaming follow these 3 steps:

1. Contact Pacific Online and request that we configure a Windows Media Publishing Point for your site. This process is very quick and in most cases we'll have you setup within hours.

2. Create an announcement file. An announcement file is simply a text file with an .asx file extension that provides a player with the information it needs to connect and receive content.

Below is a sample of the most basic type of announcement file. To create an announcement file for your media copy this code into a text file and save it with a .asx file extension. The example below assumes your user name is AAA111 and you are streaming a Windows Media video named myvideo.wmv which is located in in a directory called media.

green text = comments
red text = fields that you will need to customize

-----

<asx version = "3.0">
  <entry>
    <ref href = "mms://www.yoursitename.com/AAA111/media/filename.wmv"/>
<!-- you must include your username after your URL -->
  </entry>
</asx>

3. To stream your media file simply call the asx file you created in the above step from a browser. If you saved the above example to your root directory in a file named teststream.asx you would call http://www.yoursitename.com/teststream.asx.

Media Services has a variety of other features that you can customize through the use of XML tags. For more information consult the Windows Media Services site.