Real Time Streaming Protocol

The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), developed by the IETF and created in 1998 as RFC 2326, is a protocol for use in streaming media systems, which allows a client to remotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commands such as "play" and "pause", and allowing time-based access to files on a server.

The sending of streaming data itself is not part of the RTSP protocol. Most RTSP servers use the standards-based RTP as the transport protocol for the actual audio/video data. The RTSP server from RealNetworks also features RealNetworks' proprietary RDT as the transport protocol.

Clients

GStreamer
Media Player Classic
MPEG4IP Archived 2008-09-07 at the Wayback Machine
MPlayer
QuickTime
Avi player Archived 2012-02-15 at the Wayback Machine
RealPlayer
Skype
VLC media player
Winamp
Windows Media Player
Xine
MythTV via Freebox
Gom player Archived 2012-03-20 at the Wayback Machine

Server software

QuickTime Streaming Server: Apple's closed-source streaming server that ships with Mac OS X Server
Darwin Streaming Server: Open-sourced version of Quicktime Streaming Server maintained by Apple
pvServer: Formerly called PacketVideo Streaming Server, this is Alcatel-Lucent's streaming server product.
Helix DNA Server: RealNetworks' streaming server. Comes in both open-source and proprietary flavors.
Live555: Open source C++ server and client libraries used in well known clients like VLC and mplayer.
VideoLAN: Open source media player and streaming server
Windows Media Services: Microsoft's streaming server included with Windows Server.
VX30: Streaming video server and embedded JAVA client from Maui X-Stream.

Related pages

Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)
Fusion RTSP solution for embedded systems, e.g. IPTV, internet TV and mobile internet devices.

Other websites

RTSP.org Archived 2007-03-06 at the Wayback Machine, a central information repository about RTSP.
Tunneling RTSP and RTP Over HTTP Archived 2009-01-20 at the Wayback Machine A standard solution to help RTSP work through firewalls and web proxies