Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is live a lot harder? Aside from latency (which isn't much of a problem unless you are competing with TV or some other distribution system), it seems easier than on-demand, since you send the same data to everyone and don't need to handle having a potentially huge library in all datacenters (you have to distribute the data, but that's just like having an extra few users per server). My guess is that the problem w…
I'm not an expert in this, but at least familiar with the trade. I'd imagine with on-demand services you already have the full content and therefore can use algorithms to compress frames and perform all kinds of neat tricks to. With live streaming I'd imagine a lot of these algorithms are useless as there isn't enough delay & time to properly use them, so they're required to stream every single pixel and maybe some J…
But in either case, you can put that stuff on your CDN days ahead of time. You can choose to preload it in the cache because you know a bunch of people are gonna want it. You also know that not every single individual is going to start at the exact same time.
For live, every single person wants every single bite at the same time and you can’t preload anything. Brutal.