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Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

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Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#911

Post by vitus »

ta1243 wrote: post #900
vitus wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes, but nobody streams RAW video in practice, and I can't imagine any users or service providers who'd be happy with that level of inefficiency. In general, it's safe to assume some reasonable compression (which, yes, is likely lossy).

It's quite possible for one broadcasters 480p30 to be a higher bitrate than another broadcasters 720p60 I remember watching the last season of Game of Thrones on one streaming provider, which topped out about 3.5mbit but claimed it was "1080p". Give me a 15mbit 640x480 over 3.5mbit of 1920x1080 for that type of material any day.

> It's quite possible for one broadcasters 480p30 to be a higher bitrate than another broadcasters 720p60

Yes, I don't think anyone's disputing that.

> I remember watching the last season of Game of Thrones on one streaming provider, which topped out about 3.5mbit but claimed it was "1080p".

Why the scare quotes? That's a perfectly reasonable bitrate using modern compression like H.265, especially for a TV show that's filmed at 24 fps.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#912

Post by bitcharmer »

mvandermeulen wrote: post #699
mmooss wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Dad has always been a fan of boxing What did your Dad think about the 'boxing'?

Was this necessary? The comment was on a tech forum about the tech issues, do we really need to reprosecute the argument that it wasn’t real boxing here too? There are plenty of other places for those so painfully inclined to do so

[dead]

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#913

Post by dartos »

ryandv wrote: post #756
shermantanktop wrote: post #698

Every time a big company screws up, there are two highly informed sets of people who are guaranteed to be lurking, but rarely post, in a thread like this: 1) those directly involved with the incident, or employees of the same company. They have too much to lose by circumventing the PR machine. 2) people at similar companies who operate similar systems with similar scale and risks. Those people know how hard this is a…

I've noticed this amongst the newer "careerist" sort of software developer who is stumbling into the field for money, as opposed to the obsessive computer geek of yesteryear, who practiced it as a hobby. This character archetype is a transplant, say, less than five years ago from another, often non-technical discipline, and was taught or learned from overly simplistic materials that decry systems programming, or netw…

even for enthusiasts, to go from no programming experience to understanding how Netflix handles video streaming at scale would take more than 5 years.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#914

Post by eqvinox »

shermantanktop wrote: post #698

Every time a big company screws up, there are two highly informed sets of people who are guaranteed to be lurking, but rarely post, in a thread like this: 1) those directly involved with the incident, or employees of the same company. They have too much to lose by circumventing the PR machine. 2) people at similar companies who operate similar systems with similar scale and risks. Those people know how hard this is a…

3) the people supplying 1) and 2) with tools (hard- or software)

We (yep) don't know the exact details, but we do get sent snapshots of full configs and deployments to debug things... we might not see exact load patterns, but it's enough to know. And if course we can't tell due to NDAs.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#915

Post by rldjbpin »

cryptozeus wrote: post #447

Everyone here talking like this something unique netflix had to deal with. Hotstar live streamed india va Pakistan cricket match with zero issues with all time high live viewership ever in the history of live telecast. Why would viewers paying $20 month want to think about their technical issues, they dropped the ball pure and simple. Tech already exists for this, it’s been done before even by espn, nothing new here.

> with zero issues

depending on whom you ask, the bitrate used by the stream is significantly lower than what is considered acceptable from free livestreaming services, that albeit stream to much, much smaller audience.

without splitting hairs, livestreaming was never their forte, and going live with degradation elsewhere is not a great look for our distributed computing champ.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#916

Post by patrick451 »

geor9e wrote: post #566
softwaredoug wrote: post #495

The way to deal with this is to constantly do live events, and actually build organizational muscle. Not these massive one off events in an area the tech team has no experience in.

They've been doing live events since 2023. But it's hard to be prepared for something that's never been done by anyone before — a superbowl scale event, entirely viewed over the internet. The superbowl gets to offload to cable and over the air. Interestingly, I didn't have any problems with my stream. So it sounds like the bandwidth problems might be localized, perhaps by data center or ISP.

The ISP hypothesis doesn't make sense to me. I could not stream the live event from Netflix. But I could watch any other show on netflix or youtube or hulu at the same time.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#917

Post by patrick451 »

freefaler wrote: post #588
ksec wrote: post #122

Netflix is good only on streaming ready made content, not live streaming, but; 1. Netflix is a 300B company, this isn't a resources issue. 2. This isn't the first time they have done live streaming at this scale either. They already have prior failure experience, you expect the 2nd time to be better, if not perfect. 3. There were plenty of time between first massive live streaming to second. Meaning plenty of time to…

The problem is that provisioning vast capacity for peak viewership is expensive and requires long-term commitment. Some providers won't give you more connectivity to their network unless you sign a 12 month deal where you prepay that. Peak traffic is very expensive to run, because you're building capacity that will be empty/unsused when the event ends. Who'd pay for that? That's why it's tricky and that's why Akamai…

What's your point? If they couldn't manage to secure the resources necessary, they shouldn't have agreed to livestream it. As a customer, I don't care AT ALL if it's difficult.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#918

Post by grayhatter »

fragmede wrote: post #832
david-gpu wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. There are also former employees who have very educated opinions about what is likely going on, but between NDAs and whatnot there is only so much they are willing to say. It is frustrating for those in the know, but there are lines they can't or won't cross. Whenever an HN thread covers subjects where I have direct professional experience I have to bite my tongue while people who have no clue can b…

Some people can just let others be wrong and just stay silent, but some people can't help themselves. So if you say something really wrong, like this was caused by Netflix moving to Azure, they should have stayed on AWS! someone will come along to correct you. If you're looking for the right answer, post the wrong one, alongside some provoking statement (Windows is better than Linux because this works there), and you…

> Some people can just let others be wrong and just stay silent, but some people can't help themselves.

As one of thoes who cant help themselves; the way you phrase it feels a bit too cynical, I've always interpreted it as people want to help, but don't want to offer something that's wrong. Which is basically how falsifiable science works. It's so much easier to refute the assertion that birds generate lift with tiny backpacks with turboprops attached. Than it is to explain the finer details of avian flight mechanics. I couldn't describe above a superficial level how flapping works, but I can confidently refute the idea of a turboprop backpack. (Everyone knows birds gave up the turboprop design during the great kerosene shortage of 1128)

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#919

Post by skybrian »

mbrumlow wrote: post #804
skybrian wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing dry runs regularly makes sense, but whether actually shipping it makes sense seems context-dependent. It depends on how much you can minimize the side effects of shipping a release. Consider publishing a new version of a library: you'd be bumping the version number all the time and invalidating caches, causing downstream rebuilds, for little reason. Or if clients are lazy about updating, any two clients would b…

These are the very arguments I get all the time. 1) I want to invalidate caches, I want to know that these systems work. I want to know that my software properly handles this situation. 2) if I have lazy clients. I want to know. And I want to motivate them on updating sooner or figure out how to force update them. I don’t want to not update because some people are slow. I want the norm to be it is updating, so when t…

I think it often makes sense to do full releases frequently, but not continuously. For example, Chrome is on an approximately four week schedule, which makes sense for them. Other projects have faster cadences. There is a point of diminishing returns, though, and you seem to be ignoring the downsides.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#920

Post by kortilla »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #690
kortilla wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the one telling people their comments provide no value. That’s far more aggressive than using a word not even directed at you

How could that possibly be aggressive? It's not a personal indictment. Tone however, matters in any context. I hope you find it within yourself to treat strangers nicer.

> How could that possibly be aggressive?

You butted into a conversation to tell someone their contribution added no value without adding anything constructive. A comment of “your comment is useless” is pure aggression and is ironically even less useful than the one it’s deriding.

> Tone however, matters in any context.

You are getting upset because someone used a swear word. You’ll find that is just deep seated classism and working on that will let you have much more fulfilling interactions.

Tone policing never works. It’s a waste of calories and everyone’s time.

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