Operating systems for the multimedia office of the future
Jana Dospisil, Elizabeth A. Kendall, Tony Polgar · 1996
Recent developments in distributed multimedia technology and in the integration of variety of media have the potential to change the nature of dissemination of information. However, it is important to ensure that developers are provided with proper frameworks and system services which help them to develop new applications efficiently. The capability to deliver continuous media to the workstation and meet its real-time processing requirements is now recognised as a central element of future distributed office applications. The objective of this paper is to survey the trends in support for continuous media processing in distributed environments. In particular, we look at the emerging abstractions in operating systems to ensure predictable response times for delivering continuous media at the desktop. In conclusion, we attempt to derive a set of possible directions for future multimedia operating systems.