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'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

theguardian.com

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Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#51

Post by Macha »

gruez wrote: post #49
Macha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when YouTube switched from it's original method of streaming to DASH. The old method was to basically pick a file and buffer up to N time in advance (I think it was based on the media length). But the original DASH implementation was very aggressive about keeping a minimal buffer size and downgrading quality at the slightest hiccup. I was also on a not particularly great internet connection at the time, so…

>YouTube's changes meant that just buffered like 15s and then shifted down to 360p. If you're using the web player and manually set the quality, it should never downgrade the quality during playback. If your connection is too slow it'll just pause while it tries to buffer

This was ~5 years ago, all I can say was that it was definitely not the case then.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#52

Post by criddell »

Dalewyn wrote: post #24
aldarisbm wrote: post #19

I have fiber internet at my apartment with a mesh network, and I've found myself missing physical media a bit more lately. Inevitably at some point while watching any 4K media. The buffering will fail or speeds just simply drop? and I start getting visibly lower resolution, this really kills the immersion for me. Maybe I just don't have the right combination of devices, and/or I absolutely need a wired connection. Re…

>I absolutely need a wired connection You do.

Unless you have a Sony Smart TV. I bought one a few years ago and the ethernet port is a 100 Mb. To stream from Sony's own movie service, they tell you to use WiFi:

> https://electronics.sony.com/bravia-core

> 7: The Pure Stream™ feature requires an Internet speed of at least 43 Mbps. To enjoy at the highest speed of 80 Mbps, you need an Internet speed of 115 Mbps or faster. Ethernet (wired LAN) connections are limited to 100 Mbps due to the TV's product specifications. Therefore, to enjoy 80 Mbps with Pure Stream™ functionality, you need to connect to a Wi-Fi router that supports IEEE 802.11 ac/n (wireless LAN).

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#53

Post by Dalewyn »

criddell wrote: post #52
Dalewyn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I absolutely need a wired connection You do.

Unless you have a Sony Smart TV. I bought one a few years ago and the ethernet port is a 100 Mb. To stream from Sony's own movie service, they tell you to use WiFi: > https://electronics.sony.com/bravia-core > 7: The Pure Stream™ feature requires an Internet speed of at least 43 Mbps. To enjoy at the highest speed of 80 Mbps, you need an Internet speed of 115 Mbps or faster. Ethernet (wired LAN) connections are limit…

Why I would want to connect a malvertisement tracker siphoning partyhouse to my network and subsequently the internet is beyond me, but whatever floats thy boat.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#54

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

Dalewyn wrote: post #50
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I literally see 1.2Gb/s over Wifi 6E from my MacBook Air M3 to my NAS, which is more than I get over wired GigE. So that's not marketing, that's (very-micro) real-world benchmarking. I do live in a house on a 1.5 acre parcel, so I'm not getting much congestion on the Wifi bands. Even so, I would regularly get 400Mb/s on Wifi 6 in our condo in NY where you could see 30 or more networks.

I do nightly backups of my critical machines to a central server, some are connected wirelessly. The server is obviously hard wired. Whereas the wired ones upload their backups at full gigabit speed (~100MB/s including overhead), the wireless ones only ever upload at ~10MB/s. I might see it go up to ~30MB/s if I'm lucky, but we're talking pigs flying over blue moons. The wireless machines range from "one wall away" t…

>Whereas the wired ones upload their backups at full gigabit speed (~100MB/s including overhead), the wireless ones only ever upload at ~10MB/s.

If your backup mechanism is chatty/latency-sensitive, then that would affect overall throughput. Content streaming is neither of those things though.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#55

Post by alisonatwork »

Macha wrote: post #27
everforward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, storing and arranging physical media is a pain, as is dealing with scratches. I find it roughly equal as things go. The buffering thing genuinely confuses me. I get why it happens at a technical level, but the failure mode is odd. None of the content is live, just buffer the next 5 or 10 minutes to disk and have the player read from the disk buffer. That should never buffer unless the network is degraded for a lo…

I remember when YouTube switched from it's original method of streaming to DASH. The old method was to basically pick a file and buffer up to N time in advance (I think it was based on the media length). But the original DASH implementation was very aggressive about keeping a minimal buffer size and downgrading quality at the slightest hiccup. I was also on a not particularly great internet connection at the time, so…

I'm so happy someone has explained this, because it's a problem that has bothered me for years and I always assumed it was an issue on my end. It's incredibly annoying when you can't make out what's happening in a video, set a higher bitrate then pause to wait for it to download, and it just freezes a couple seconds past the current point, which ends up making the whole video unwatchable.

I don't know what kind of internet these Google engineers are working with, but for people on shared wifi, or in dense urban areas where there is a lot of interference, or tethering to a 4G phone, or sitting on a train, or a mountain, or using a VPN, or living in a country where the government messes with the traffic, it just isn't realistic to expect users to have a fat pipe that never drops out.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#56

Post by everforward »

actionfromafar wrote: post #37
everforward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, storing and arranging physical media is a pain, as is dealing with scratches. I find it roughly equal as things go. The buffering thing genuinely confuses me. I get why it happens at a technical level, but the failure mode is odd. None of the content is live, just buffer the next 5 or 10 minutes to disk and have the player read from the disk buffer. That should never buffer unless the network is degraded for a lo…

Also, if it's a TV, they typically don't have disks, or at least not disks large enough, fast enough, and write wear tolerant enough, to cache data.

Is this still true in the age of the smart TV? I’ve never looked but always presumed they had essentially the guts of a crappy Android phone with the radio transceivers replaced.

They get apps and updates now so I would’ve assumed some semi-reliable persistent storage. This really doesn’t even need to be persistent; resetting on reboot would be perfectly fine.

I’ve no doubt they would struggle to cache “real” 4K, but at the bitrate most of this 4K stuff is sent at, 1 GB of cache should be at least 5 minutes. Netflix recommends at least 15 Mbps for 4K streaming. Even doubled to 30Mbps, that’s ~4MB/s, or about 256 seconds of content cached per GB.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#57

Post by triceratops »

DVDs are great. The only downside is the obnoxious trailers and loading screens they make you sit through. Often I can start playing a movie on Netflix faster than when I possess a physical copy of that media. Which is crazy when you think about it.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#58

Post by TMWNN »

mu53 wrote: post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

My understanding is that the official Saturday Night Live clips on YouTube have been silently edited to remove "problematic" skits.

I will again make my proposal regarding such edits (and continued availability of content in general https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39113529>):

* If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain.

* If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#59

Post by arwineap »

gruez wrote: post #48
SoftTalker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same problem with physical books disappearing. History doesn't change if you read a book. If you read Wikipedia, who knows? Not picking on Wikipedia, same could be with any online source.

Can't you just download a Wikipedia archive?

Wikipedia is different, you can always check and discuss the edits.

I think your point still stands, just taking some heat off of wikis

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#60

Post by throwup238 »

mu53 wrote: post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

It’s what made me drop Hulu/Prime and start pirating and buying (usually second hand) physical media for a lot of my content again.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which actively lampshades all of the themes being censored now has so many episodes missing from streaming services it’s almost one per season. And they’re some of the best episodes!

I’m actually surprised Archer is still around.

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