Why is it more difficult to stream video to a large number of viewers than to a small number?

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In a sense, in what way is a media streaming operation different from a radio broadcast, or billboard, which do not “feel” the strain of a larger audience?

In: Technology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The key difference is that radio is a broadcast medium, while the internet is a communication medium.

For radio, the process of sending out data to the world is independant of who is listening. Its basically shouting into a room, and anyone who cares to hear can just choose to listen.

For the internet, everything is done via 2-way communication. If you want the video, you don’t just listen in to some shouted broadcast. You have to *ask* someone to give you the next bit, and that server has to understand and respind to each request individually.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Basically you have servers that have the video you stream, and it goes to each person individually, through fiber optics or whatever, to each persons house (super simplified). If only one person watches, they get 100% of the output, if another person jumps on, it splits, and so on and so on. Radio and TV is completely different. They aren’t connected to anything except the transmitter. They send their signal as a wave into the air, on whatever channel of the EM spectrum they’re allowed. It’s just sent through the air, waiting for the receiver in your tv or car to pick up.

Netflix is like actively taking the video from them, and tv/radio is like passively picking up what they send into the atmosphere.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you had to give people a newspaper and each person had to give you 2 bucks it would take alot longer to give that paper to 10 or 20 people than 5. Streaming works the same way each viewer has to be given the video separately and specifically to them not anyone else.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Television broadcasts are passive and one-way. Internet broadcasts are two-way, and active. A passive signal can only be read, not replied to. An active communication is when both parties are doing things and have to track each others actions. As you add more people to that system, it slows down exponentially.