<aside> 👋 This page is part of the Getting Started collection. If you’re new to Thea then familiarizing yourself with the pages in this collection is a good idea.

</aside>

Thea provides three strategies to stream content to its users:

• Direct
• On-the-fly transcode
• Pre-transcode

Direct Streaming

Streaming your ingested content directly is by far the easiest and most common method of streaming content from Thea.

Benefits

• Is available immediately after ingesting content
• Requires very little processing power
• Requires no additional disk space
• Streams in the source quality

Limitations

• Media resolution and bit-rate cannot be adjusted to better suit the viewing medium (e.g., streaming in lower quality when watching on a low-resolution screen)
• Poor internet connections will suffer from buffering if the content is being streamed over the internet

How to Use?

To initiate a direct stream of content, the user need only find the media they wish to watch and then select ‘Watch Now’ - the default watch mode is ‘Direct’, and will cause this streaming mode to be used.

On-the-fly Transcode Streaming

Streaming your media using on-the-fly transcoding is useful in certain scenarios as it allows the end-user to optimize the content they’re streaming to better suit their needs.

Benefits

• Is available immediately after ingesting content
• Users on poor internet connections can adjust their streaming settings to avoid buffering
• Media resolution and bit-rate can be adjusted to better suit the viewing medium (e.g., streaming in lower quality when watching on a low-resolution screen)
• Requires no additional disk space

Limitations

• Requires hardware processing power to be capable of transcoding the content fast enough
• Multiple on-the-fly transcodes may push the server hardware to its limit, causing clients to experience buffering

How to Use?

To initiate an on-the-fly transcode stream of content, the user need only find the media they wish to watch, select ‘Watch Now’, and select an option from the drop-down (other than ‘Direct’, which is covered above).