Whenever you are talking about online video, most frequent question is asked in the mind of the novice users what is the difference between streaming video and downloading video? When a layman clicks on video link on a website, he wouldn’t know which technologies are applied unless he tries to know about it. Both kinds of online videos, streaming and downloading video systems have their own benefits and limitations, distinctive ways of delivery. When you are downloading video file with the support of web server, it is referred as progressive download, though it is not streaming in actual sense but very trouble-free volume download as video clip on the users’ desktop.

The web server helps to deliver the data to the users’ computer when a user is clicking on the video link without considering the exact file size either it is Kbps or MB/GB, the main function of web server is to port video data from one location to another. It is also taken as streaming video as it can playback immediately from beginning. The progressive download allows the users to view video in media players when the sufficient data has been transferred to user’s computer and you are unable to play video unless all file is delivered from the web server. In this way video file is saved temporarily on user’s computer, it can be played again without downloading it again.

Web server is supported by HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) to transport data via networking system. HTTP web server is workable to operate TCP (Transport Control Protocol) which helps to deliver the data packets over the network without considering its format or size. If the user’s browser or media player is unable to receive data packet from server due to some error, it helps to resend that packet on the demand of the user. The main advantage of video downloading system from HTTP web server is that the small-sized videos can be watched easily after download any time due to their short size. Streaming videos are much more appropriate for long video clips, when you want to activate all interactive artifices like video searching or inter-linking of video file and video-statistics (how many times video is being watched). You may control the impact of video over your network by using streaming technologies.

A user may view movie trailers with quick or real time, supported by apple technology. When a user visits the certain website, progressive download video starts playing as video clips are loaded on load-bar. The video load bar is struck by the play-head, the video pauses until the sufficient video data is transferred to start playing. The visitor of the website has option of selecting the quality (e.g., high, medium, low), offered by the web server without any particular bandwidth.  The users may view videos instantly without any technical error while watching video if they have high bandwidth. But the users with low bandwidth have to wait for loading video clips even if they choose high quality video. In other words, high or low bandwidth is very similar to the high or low quality of video.
 Streaming video is a complex video file delivery system which compresses and delivers the data according to the targeted bandwidth. For instance, there would be little, closely compressed edition of video clips for dial-up users while there is a bulky-sized video version, loosely compressed for the broadband users. When a viewer tries to watch streaming video, flash will determine the exact bandwidth of the visitors and stream the particular video according to their internet connectivity speed. It shows how the users with low-bandwidth connection would receive low-quality video automatically. Streaming video , bandwidth determine the video quality that’s why if the user attempts to download high-quality video from low-bandwidth, the result would be awful as the flash player may undergo the repeated process of buffering cycle which hinders the video inaccessible to the desired viewers. 

Progressive video download is transferred in the user’s cache while streaming video is not cached where the rebuffing process begins whenever video is required to replay or seek the different segment. A user may retrieve the video file from their cache or download it from HTTP web server and it is taken as progressive download video. It is very difficult to save video file via streaming download in the local server or cache of user.  
In short, the main difference between a streaming and progressive download is the server software and equivalent networking protocol, operated to transfer the media file.