One of the drawbacks of many kinds of streaming media is that there are special protocols and non-standard ports used, which can lead to several different types of failures, and ultimately, a lot of frustration. When Apple set out to include a streaming video feature on their iPhone OS, they decided to use HTTP for several reasons. First and foremost, they could avoid many of the pitfalls of typical streaming media setups. For example: RTSP streams are often rejected by overzealous firewalls and routers, which means that many viewers who reside behind corporate/office firewalls will not be able to view your video stream.  Read more... (469 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)