Feels more like an ad for AWS than a technical post
Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
111–120 of 139 posts
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#112> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…
I get your point, but how many of these tech companies will actually authorize their employees who know what they're talking about to speak freely with tech reporters about how their system works? I would figure most would redirect you to a PR flunky to feed meaningless corporate-speak to any reporters, and then it's all "Netflix uses the latest internet technology to ensure the best possible viewing experience for a…
Netflix is particularly open about how it works. There are some confidential bits, but most of the infrastructure projects are not considered proprietary. (I work at Netflix)
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
You react like Google pioneered these ideas. Many of the things Netflix does here, Google does too... but VDNs did before YouTube was a twinkle in Chad, Steve, and Jawed’s eye. The custom appliance proactive multi-tier video placement process outlined here, along with more techniques not mentioned (some of the most significant are only just now being rediscovered by non-CDNs such as Netflix or even AWS), were general…
My beef was not more like "who did it first", I honestly don't know and I couldn't find a reference online of anyone did something like this at this scale before google/youtube/akamai. The Point is the global scale of this on-premise network and the amount of data they move. I think Netflix is a blip compare to youtube/google/Akamai/facebook (I recently learned facebook also has a similar program, but I think they al…
Netflix isn't a blip.
For instance: https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/apps-by-in...
Still true in 2017: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/05/u-s-cord-cutters-watch-mor...
Regardless, long form video streamed globally without buffering is incredibly difficult. Short form clips are drastically easier. Do the math on how much content at what quality can fit in a given cache, or how long it takes to swap a piece of content in a cache, you'll start to see why.
It's surprising to me that streaming well is still not a commodity. Even less so if you consider transactional (paid) video, which is what Netflix does.
For example, just recently, tech press talked about cable companies losing $10B a year from account sharing.
This was a problem VDNs solved in late 90s / early 00s for streaming protocols, but the technique for handling this across a global footprint was sidelined when YouTube's "http" progressive downloads / pseudo streaming and 'ad supported' video became vogue.
Now that streams need to act more like streams again, and people want to charge for the content itself again, the solution is again needed, and no http-based "commodity" CDN seems to have it sorted out. Netflix does.
PS. A couple refs from before Netflix/Google/YouTube:
- https://www.google.com/patents/US20010027491
- https://www.google.com/patents/US20010047275
- https://news.microsoft.com/2000/06/12/microsofts-new-digital...
Those were first iterations. Later iterations were more sophisticated, and not patented in order to not disclose.
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#114> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…
Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…
> For whatever reason it got popular for awhile so I tried to make something out of it. That, like most of the industry is petering out now, so we'll see what the future holds.
What industry are you referring to here?
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…
> For whatever reason it got popular for awhile so I tried to make something out of it. That, like most of the industry is petering out now, so we'll see what the future holds. What industry are you referring to here?
Advertising supported technology blogs, magazines, websites, etc.
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#116> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…
Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…
I think the condensed format is great, but the initial disclaimer makes it sound like it was assembled in a vacuum from open sources. For a post like this with a very specific focus it might make sense to reach out to a couple Netflix engineers for clarifications or just making sure there are no errors. I have worked on some playback systems for a few years and would not mind answering technical questions, I am sure others would do the same
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#117> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…
Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…
One solution would be to email your draft to all authors whose content you used in your article and see if they require any amendments. Thanks for writing the article!
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#118This article is a chapter from my new book Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10.
The normal expression is "explain like I'm 5", but in the cloud, you need to double everything, in case an AZ goes down.
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
It records your like/dislike, but it doesn’t distribute the change to its database immediately. Same for YouTube or so many other services.
The thing is I don't feel like any of the match ratings in the last year and a half since I've been using Netflix have had anything to do with my interests, the ratings I've given out or with my viewing history. Unless propagation to their database takes two years, I'm really interested in how they actually arrive at match ratings.
I believe largely because a single "like / dislike" is massively inferior to the old traditional Rating system where I am able to Rank content I like...
Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?
#120> Netflix Saves Money In AWS How much of it due to special discount that netflix gets from AWS. Would a company thats not highly visible as netflix save the same amount of money ? > Recommendations. I find netflix recommendations pretty bad. Does it really work for other people?
>>I find netflix recommendations pretty bad. Does it really work for other people?
They used to, the old system I found the recommendation to be pretty good and discovered some new things as a result
The new, like/dislike system is garbage and most of the stuff is recommends are not something I would enjoy... I wonder how much of that is even based on my personal rating anymore or it is just stuff netflix wants to promote...