Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video streams for example the BBC. They may also allow timeshift viewing or listening such as Preview Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet broadcasters who never had onair licenses. This means that an Internetconnected device such as a computer or something more specific can be used to access online media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider from pornography to highly specialized technical webcasts. Podcasting is a variation on this theme where—usually audio—material is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody with little censorship or licensing control to broadcast audiovisual material on a worldwide basis.

Webcams can be seen as an even lowerbudget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give fullframerate video the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole ships in the Panama Canal the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises live and in real time. Video chat rooms video conferencing and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home with and without twoway sound.

YouTube sometimes described as an Internet phenomenon because of the vast amount of users and how rapidly the sites popularity has grown was founded on February. It is now the leading website for free streaming video. It uses a flashbased web player which streams video files in the format FLV. Users are able to watch videos without signing up however if users do sign up they are able to upload an unlimited amount of videos and they are given their own personal profile. It is currently estimated that there arevideos on YouTube and it is also currently estimated thatnew videos are uploaded every day.

Voice telephony VoIP

For more details on this topic see VoIP.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional twoway voice extension to some of the instant messaging systems that took off around the year . In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that as the Internet carries the actual voice traffic VoIP can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call especially over long distances and especially for those with alwayson Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.