Silverlight: Server-Side Playlists with Arvixe Hosting

Last Updated on Sunday, 2 September 2012 02:33 Written by Andrew Ivanov Tuesday, 11 September 2012 12:00

For Silverlight, a server-side playlist (SSPL) is a sequence of media assets (either audio or video) that allows server administrators to control the sequence of media viewed by users. This playlist can be created statically or dynamically. A server-side playlist used to serve media to Silverlight can be used only for streaming (either on-demand or broadcast); it cannot be used to serve downloaded media. Silverlight uses .wsx configuration files to specify an SSPL that can be served to the client via the MediaElement object. Some advantages of using an SSPL include the following:

1. Because the server seamlessly switches between the media files in a playlist, you can customize the viewer experience by combining multiple digital media files into what will appear to the end user to be a single content stream. This minimizes bandwidth spikes by decreasing the number of times that clients must connect to retrieve content.
2. When users connect to a site before a live broadcast has started, you can provide media that plays in a loop while users wait for the live broadcast to begin.