MUMBAI: The constraint on broadband means that video streaming over the Internet is still limited in its scope in India. Globally however, the picture is the reverse.

Last year, streaming media registered strong growth with total video streams up by 104 per cent to 7.8 billion and aggregate tuning hours for Internet music radio were 53 per cent higher compared to 2002.

Around 78 per cent of video streams served were viewed at broadband rates, according to the annual market report published by AccuStream iMedia Research. The report titled Streaming Media 2003: Brand, User and Audience Share Analysis provides a detailed market analysis of the year in streaming media, with extensive data by audience type, daypart, content category, bit rate, site, network, aggregator. It also includes media consumption patterns of high-speed users, forecasts and historical comparisons.

A company release informs that broadband streams viewed by unique user per month rose to 10.2 in 2003 compared to 6.9 in 2002. This represented a 47.8 per cent increase. The report has noted that the increase in residential broadband users, combined with an already media savvy group of high-speed users at work, plus better premium content and more sophisticated media players helped power robust growth.

In terms of content popularity, music videos captured a 33 per cent viewing share, followed by news at 28 per cent and sports 17 per cent. The top ten streaming video sites averaged over 400 million streams per month alone last year.

Most of the streaming growth took place on a few selected big aggregator platforms such as Real Networks, ESPN, AOL and Yahoo.