Multicasting is one of the more innovative forms of data distribution today. With the relevance of voice and video communications over the internet, multicast video creates the structure and direction for distributors to offer high quality video conferencing and video entertainment tools using effective bandwidth usage. Unlike broadcasting, multicast video is distributed to a select set of audience to allow one-way media on a larger, more defined user base. For its use, multicast video is effective in organizations and educational institutions for online training and classes.

Multicast video is only one of the four forms of IP data distribution. The other three are unicast, broadcast, and anycast. Mutlicast separates itself from the other three since it provides content to a large 'listening' base or audience that is specifically interested in the content. Multicast video ensures that the content is presented to the interested end user while leaving out the rest. The end user can leave the video multicast session or join the network at any time during the streaming. This implementation saves bandwidth for the content producer while allowing fast streaming and high definition videos for the end user. Additionally, the one-way streaming approach ensures the security and integrity of the data feed.

The main catalyst of multicast video is increasing Internet speeds that allow real time streaming over a properly structured and closed VLAN setup. However, there are still some technical limitations that might not make multicast video possible for certain purposes and organizations. One of which is the infrastructure overhead and hardware that will keep the network running. There is a certain critical mass to justify the cost of multicast video. Video content still presents various format and storage issues that might be very costly for organization in the long run especially if they really do not have a program to keep multicast video useful for them.

Video Multicasting is viable for business lectures, announcement of company earnings, training of sales teams and other departments, seminars, and key speeches. In these implementations, a secure, high-speed and clear audio and video quality is required.

Some companies offer dedicated systems called media stream servers to implement video multicasting. Helius IP solutions offers a server system and a client program to cover for end-to-end video multicasting. Using the most advanced formats today like MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and HDTV, Helius can provide high quality video to every member of the network.