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Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

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Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#31

Post by Sunspark »

shmerl wrote: post #28
lathiat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about all the older CPUs and GPUs out there that don't have hardware support for AV1?

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#32

Post by Kaedon »

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."

The challenge would be that Prime Video is distributed on many client devices. Here’s a list of a few TV OSes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smart_TV_platforms. How would you manage a different native app for each of them?

Caveat: previously worked at Prime Video though not in this area, still at Amazon

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#33

Post by shmerl »

Sunspark wrote: post #31
shmerl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What about all the older CPUs and GPUs out there that don't have hardware support for AV1?

That's why I said as it's being adopted. Right now it's just the very beginning of this phase (for instance AMD just started providing hardware decode in RDNA2).

So I expect this to become a non issue at some point.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#34

Post by hashimotonomora »

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."

It’s all about deployability.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#35

Post by systemvoltage »

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."

I love native apps. But on the scale of Amazon (and having to compete with Netflix), slightest bit of friction, in this case downloading and installing an app, accepting permissions, etc takes a minute or two. It would be absolutely catastrophic to their competitiveness. You need to think more broadly on scale.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#36

Post by gjsman-1000 »

Kaedon wrote: post #32
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."

The challenge would be that Prime Video is distributed on many client devices. Here’s a list of a few TV OSes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smart_TV_platforms . How would you manage a different native app for each of them? Caveat: previously worked at Prime Video though not in this area, still at Amazon

I could be incorrect, but last time I did some reverse-engineering, Netflix had a Qt application that used native C++ bindings to knock out huge sections of that list.

That Qt application was only lightly modified for each platform, IIRC, and it appeared all over the place from those cheap Linux-based Blu-ray players to Smart TV clients. Anywhere that was embedded, generally Linux-based, and unlikely to get frequent updates.

As for some of the larger players like Roku or Android, those ones are more obvious where to hire. Java developers and BrightScript developers.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#37

Post by Sunspark »

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.

Fair, but in this case I think the tablet should be usable. Sure it's old and only a dual-core cpu, but checking the list of hardware accelerated qualcomm decoder codecs it supports, it lists: vc1, divx, divx311, divx4, avc, mpeg2, mpeg4, h263.

Surely AVC which is h.264 should still be supported..

Maybe it gets tripped up trying to use the software google decoder codecs instead?

That said, I am not able to test it anymore. The tablet is on kitkat and I'm not able today to find a site hosting a minsdk older than lollipop. It's not a big deal, but it's disappointing to see apks for services that used to work just disappear. They always gobble on about "security". Why is it a problem for everyone else except Netflix? Netflix loves supporting devices.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#38

Post by nopenopenopeno »

Sunspark wrote: post #37
lathiat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair, but in this case I think the tablet should be usable. Sure it's old and only a dual-core cpu, but checking the list of hardware accelerated qualcomm decoder codecs it supports, it lists: vc1, divx, divx311, divx4, avc, mpeg2, mpeg4, h263. Surely AVC which is h.264 should still be supported.. Maybe it gets tripped up trying to use the software google decoder codecs instead? That said, I am not able to test it an…

Can you recommend any resources for learning about video codecs?

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#39

Post by nikki93 »

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."

You can render OpenGL with C++ and compile it to Wasm but alsk have it build and run natively (Emscripten or your own bindings or whatever). So this can be a way to do both, while keeping the reach of web. Depends on what kind of application you're building and whether this makes sense for that, for sure.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#40

Post by gjsman-1000 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #35
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."

I love native apps. But on the scale of Amazon (and having to compete with Netflix), slightest bit of friction, in this case downloading and installing an app, accepting permissions, etc takes a minute or two. It would be absolutely catastrophic to their competitiveness. You need to think more broadly on scale.

If you read the original article, the use of WebAssembly is mainly across a broad array of device types where it will be packaged into an app. That app will require installation, accepting permissions, and all of that just like a native app.

The point is moot except for anyone watching Prime Video in the web browser.

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