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Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

amazon.science

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Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#21

Post by jozzy-james »

jeffbee wrote: post #12

Prime video has unbelievably bad performance on LG WebOS, and it’s not the platform because Hulu, Netflix, Disney, YouTube are all fine. If this is new and makes their app work acceptably, then great! Just checked and Prime using 90MB in my TV, while YouTube uses 214KB, so maybe I already have the wasm monstrosity.

haven't noticed any performance issues on mine (edit: relative to other apps in that ecosystem) - tho is a newer model. the UHD for in-house productions is pretty darn atrocious tho (looking at you, goliath)

edit: HDR, not UHD...tho have only noticed it predominate on their originals vs purchases.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#22

Post by exdsq »

ec109685 wrote: post #20

What was the reason for web assembly versus just running rust directly on the target hardware? Is the idea that the constrained WASM environment requires less QA than if the hardware was targeted specifically by the rust compiler?

If you target a WASM VM you’re not tied into Rust itself which seems appealing from a risk standpoint

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#23

Post by exdsq »

miohtama wrote: post #9
nojito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Rust has the best WASM tooling, and the 2020’s may end up being the WASM/Rust decade. Still pales in comparison to .NET

Look to the future, not to the past.

Look to what’s being used in prod, not HN hype.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#24

Post by Shadonototra »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

Language success is in large parts driven by what system adopts that language. Objective-C’s success was driven by iOS. C’s success was driven by Unix. C++’s early success was driven in large part by 90’s GUI frameworks ( MDC, OWL, Qt, etc. I think Wasm is shaping up to be huge in that you can safely run, high performance code across multiple operating systems/CPU’s. Of all the languages, I think Rust has the best WA…

> I think Rust has the best WASM

Nope, C/C++ has, emscripten remains undefeated

You don't just put a name and expect things to skyroket

C++/Go/C# has more chance to become the standard toolkit for WASM than rust

rust problem, is people promotes more the "rust"™ rather than their project, the crabs definitely shadows them, it's unfortunate

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#25

Post by laurencerowe »

jeffbee wrote: post #12

Prime video has unbelievably bad performance on LG WebOS, and it’s not the platform because Hulu, Netflix, Disney, YouTube are all fine. If this is new and makes their app work acceptably, then great! Just checked and Prime using 90MB in my TV, while YouTube uses 214KB, so maybe I already have the wasm monstrosity.

While app the performance is just poor on my 2019 LG OLED TV I find HDR content to be unwatchable on it, seemingly a long running problem across multiple platforms: https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00007HLPkoSAH/le...

HDR content is somewhat better when played through the Prime Video PS5 app, though it still seems much darker than HDR content played on the Netflix/AppleTV/HBO LGTV apps.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#26

Post by gjsman-1000 »

Personally, to me, whenever I read these stories about how Amazon is doing this novel use of WebAssembly, or how Uber is doing ludicrous engineering effort to keep their React-based app under 300MB for the App Store, I can't help but think:

"Man, that's an awful lot of work to avoid writing a native app."

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#27

Post by [deleted] »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #26

Personally, to me , whenever I read these stories about how Amazon is doing this novel use of WebAssembly, or how Uber is doing ludicrous engineering effort to keep their React-based app under 300MB for the App Store, I can't help but think: "Man, that's an awful lot of work to avoid writing a native app."

[deleted]

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#28

Post by shmerl »

lathiat wrote: post #19
Sunspark wrote: post #18

Why don't apps like this leverage gpu hardware acceleration? On my old tablet, Netflix runs a-ok, the media player has hardware acceleration and runs a-ok, but Amazon Prime stutters. I haven't checked it in years, so maybe it is better now, but I am skeptical this is the case, because if the original creators of the Android app didn't think hardware accelerated video might be a nice idea, why would it be different no…

There is a cross sectional problem between what codecs that specific hardware supports (and generally is supported by all the popular devices), how much bandwidth you have on your connection and how many different codecs the various streaming services can support and cache locally. There are trade offs to be made.

Didn't everyone agree to align on AV1? So that should become a non issue as its adoption progresses.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#29

Post by aylmao »

ec109685 wrote: post #20

What was the reason for web assembly versus just running rust directly on the target hardware? Is the idea that the constrained WASM environment requires less QA than if the hardware was targeted specifically by the rust compiler?

It's an alternative that gives them the updatability of JS. When they describe their original (JS/C++) architecture they mention this as a motivating factor:

> This architecture split allows us to deliver new features and bug fixes without having to go through the very slow process of updating the C++ layer. The downloadable code is delivered through a fully automated continuous integration and delivery pipeline that can release updates as often as every few hours

They do support a lot of device types, which means a lot of compilation to produce many different binaries and probably more reliance on the app update systems of third parties.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#30

Post by gjsman-1000 »

laurencerowe wrote: post #25
jeffbee wrote: post #12

Prime video has unbelievably bad performance on LG WebOS, and it’s not the platform because Hulu, Netflix, Disney, YouTube are all fine. If this is new and makes their app work acceptably, then great! Just checked and Prime using 90MB in my TV, while YouTube uses 214KB, so maybe I already have the wasm monstrosity.

While app the performance is just poor on my 2019 LG OLED TV I find HDR content to be unwatchable on it, seemingly a long running problem across multiple platforms: https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00007HLPkoSAH/le... HDR content is somewhat better when played through the Prime Video PS5 app, though it still seems much darker than HDR content played on the Netflix/AppleTV/HBO LGTV apps.

It's not just HDR content. I was watching a 2008 BBC drama called Little Dorrit on a Roku in 1080p streaming, no HDR because that didn't exist when it was filmed. It was super smeary, had terrible blacks, tons of obvious banding artifacts, it was really bad.

I bought the 1080p Blu-Ray version from the UK, and even my parents standing 10 feet away from our 48" 1080p TV (without me explaining the problems with the Prime version) could tell the difference after about 10 seconds.

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