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Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

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Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#21

What amazes me is the lack of concern on latency for web streaming. We use the internet (and IP in general) to stream video. At high bitrates (200mbit+) we aim for sub 100ms end to end, for compressed services we're happy with 500ms, maybe upto a second if it's something like Sydney to London over the internet. I was in a control room a couple of weeks ago watching some football. There were two displays, one end was…

Already since over 20 years, the german TV chanel "RTL" is about 15 seconds later than all other TV chanels on live events like formula 1. But I have no idea why it is.

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#22

What amazes me is the lack of concern on latency for web streaming. We use the internet (and IP in general) to stream video. At high bitrates (200mbit+) we aim for sub 100ms end to end, for compressed services we're happy with 500ms, maybe upto a second if it's something like Sydney to London over the internet. I was in a control room a couple of weeks ago watching some football. There were two displays, one end was…

Interesting factoid, but some press have agreed to intentional latency as a security feature around certain events and dignitaries. The theory being that a sniper or drone operator cannot use the "live TV" footage to know their exact position. In some cases international viewers may see the "live" footage before local ones.

> The theory being that a sniper or drone operator cannot use the "live TV" footage to know their exact position.

How is this helpful in either of these cases? A sniper needs eyes on, a drone operator probably has live video from the drone. I don't see how a TV delay would have any effect.

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Live" TV broadcasts are also on a delay, so I guess it's all relative. I had a friend who lived near enough to an NFL stadium that you could hear when something big happened and the TV delay made it impossible to enjoy a home game there.

Very minor delay in the UK -- well under 2 seconds from pitch to TV on DTT in the case of the FA Cup. Sure enough to cause some grief when you can hear the crowd, but not enough to get notifications on twitter or whatever.

They intentionally delay it ~7 seconds in the US because we're scared of an errant boob or curse word to make the broadcast.

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#24
The P2P approach is interesting. Do you have data on how much bandwidth is saved at peak usage?

It might be especially interesting when many users share the same connection, effectively achieving broadcasting - the CDN pushes the data to one client, and it broadcasts it to the local network.

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#25

BBC is doing UHD, with HDR and HLG, for the world cup, with the top stream 36Mbit/second [0] There are a limited number of "spaces" available [1] -- I think it's upto 100gbit of output. Unlike with the FA Cup (where the BBC did a uhd trial), the world cup will have a lot of games during the week, where people will be watching from the office (although probably not UHD). This will mean far higher loads on the distribu…

"Only" – A subtle dig ;)

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#26

What amazes me is the lack of concern on latency for web streaming. We use the internet (and IP in general) to stream video. At high bitrates (200mbit+) we aim for sub 100ms end to end, for compressed services we're happy with 500ms, maybe upto a second if it's something like Sydney to London over the internet. I was in a control room a couple of weeks ago watching some football. There were two displays, one end was…

Already since over 20 years, the german TV chanel "RTL" is about 15 seconds later than all other TV chanels on live events like formula 1. But I have no idea why it is.

There no technical reason for it to be that high. Perhaps I should reach out to them.

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#27
post #16

What amazes me is the lack of concern on latency for web streaming. We use the internet (and IP in general) to stream video. At high bitrates (200mbit+) we aim for sub 100ms end to end, for compressed services we're happy with 500ms, maybe upto a second if it's something like Sydney to London over the internet. I was in a control room a couple of weeks ago watching some football. There were two displays, one end was…

You comment mentions two types of latency: 1. network latency, in milliseconds, that affects stream quality and stability 2. the delay (lag) between real-time capture and what the end user is seeing; this one is usually measured in seconds. A stream needs to be ingested, transcoded, sent from distribution servers to edge servers in each target region - with each step adding to the delay. Minimizing the lag is very ha…

60 seconds in the case of iplayer for the fa cup. 1m20 in the case of BBC News channel right now. HLS tends to be packetised in something like 15 second chunks at the end of the process.

I know why there's a delay, I'm just amazed that people aren't concerned about it. The BBC used to offer multicast sources of live TV, which is a far more sensible solution, far more bandwidth efficient and allows end-to-end transmission in the satellite (or even less) range.

Wowza did a talk at demuxed last year about how to do "3 second latency end to end at scale", which I found amusing given that TV people have been doing sub millisecond latency at scale for nearly 100 years, so at least some people in the industry recognize the problem (which is mainly for sports events)

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#29

What amazes me is the lack of concern on latency for web streaming. We use the internet (and IP in general) to stream video. At high bitrates (200mbit+) we aim for sub 100ms end to end, for compressed services we're happy with 500ms, maybe upto a second if it's something like Sydney to London over the internet. I was in a control room a couple of weeks ago watching some football. There were two displays, one end was…

In the US we've seen a half-dozen over-the-top TV providers launch in the past couple of years. They all seem to understand that live sports is their core feature, yet none of them tries to compete on latency. I regularly see two or more minutes from reading tweets about a goal or touchdown (from broadcast or cable viewers) until I see that TD live on Sling / PSVue / DirecTV NOW / YouTube TV (I've tried them all). Second-screening live sports is impossible with the OTT apps, and is very likely to drive me back to Comcast.

There's a real opportunity for a sports-oriented OTT company to compete on latency, a DVR that actually works, and expansive rights (I never have to guess if I have access to any sporting event).

Re: Avoid FIFA World Cup CDN Issues

#30
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You comment mentions two types of latency: 1. network latency, in milliseconds, that affects stream quality and stability 2. the delay (lag) between real-time capture and what the end user is seeing; this one is usually measured in seconds. A stream needs to be ingested, transcoded, sent from distribution servers to edge servers in each target region - with each step adding to the delay. Minimizing the lag is very ha…

60 seconds in the case of iplayer for the fa cup. 1m20 in the case of BBC News channel right now. HLS tends to be packetised in something like 15 second chunks at the end of the process. I know why there's a delay, I'm just amazed that people aren't concerned about it. The BBC used to offer multicast sources of live TV, which is a far more sensible solution, far more bandwidth efficient and allows end-to-end transmis…

Honestly, I think people are concerned, but everyone's experience to date with big streaming events has been that something invariably goes wrong - people can't connect, login issues, event won't start, buffering, etc (e.g. the McGregor Mayweather PPV). If you can get a high-quality stream at all, perhaps the time shift is secondary!
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