Is streaming video and audio always better than the alternatives?

If you use streaming for audio and video, how does caching on server and client work? If you know that users wi开发者_JS百科ll always look at the entire video, is streaming in this case a good choice?

"Streaming" is an overloaded term. Many folks refer to "progressive download" video as "streaming" or even use the term "HTTP streaming".

If you deliver the video over HTTP then it is much easier to make it cache friendly. RTP, RTMP, RTSP, et al are basically not easy to cache.

In your context, then using HTTP based streaming (or even plain HTTP progressive download) is a better option for On Demand content, most definitely.