I'm currenlty involved in designing a client application for a big hotel chain. The application is able to show rich media (MPEG II digital TV, MPEG II video on demand, Windows Media video on demand, WMV-HD, music, live webcasts, you name it...).
The problem we faced on friday was connected to the way WM services allow a client (WM Player 9) to cache streamed contents. It was actualy not a functional but rather a performance problem, because the application architecture is designed in a way that allows client computers to reflash their HD partition at every reboot. Since a lot of video content was cached (hundreds of megs), reflashing time increased.
Two ways to get rid of client side caching:
- Allow client side caching property in Windows Media Services / Windows Server 2003
- URL encoded parameter in query string (ie. http://wmedia/mymedia.wmv?wmcache=0)