Streaming Multimedia Over The Internet Using OS/2

Requirements

To access multimedia over the Internet you will need the Plug-in Pack. It says that it enhances Netscape, but it does much more. It provides the OS/2 system with a MPEG video codec and the ability to play media over http or ftp.

Streaming with caching

To play remote media from the command line is easy. Pass the URI as an argument to MPPM.

Streaming without caching

By default OS/2 will cache your media files. This is okay for most files, but if you want to listen to Internet radio you do not want to save the whole broadcast. You can tell OS/2 not to cache the file by prepending ipipe: to the URI. For more information select Help from the context menu of your Multimedia Internet Manager found in System Setup.

Streaming from the WPS

If you do not like using the command line you can create a Program Object to play a URI. Just drag off a new Program Object from the the Program Object template. Set the path and file name to the location of your MPPM.EXE which is usually in your MMOS2 directory. Set your parameter to be your URI, and you are done.

Other Media

There is nothing special about MP3 in the above example. Any media format that OS/2 can understand can be streamed.

Caveats

Some URIs use some sort of ICY protocol (SHOUTcast?) despite the fact that they begin with ‘http’. The Plug-in Pack doesn't support this protocol.

Some servers use virtual hosting, and require HTTP/1.1 to retrieve files. The Plug-in Pack only supports HTTP/1.0. This would be easy to fix if anyone has access to the Plug-in Pack source.