Live Streaming

Last night we were watching our granddaughter play volleyball from the college streaming service. We got a lot of beach balling and were surprised when our daughter texted us the score and found we were way behind the actual game. All of a sudden she said the game was over and our stream ended even though our set wasn't finished. We have poor rural internet having to use a satilite, could that be the problem? Our other daughter said their stream ended with the end of the game. They live in a bigger city with better service.

It's possible that there was buffering of the content at some point in the path to your home, especially with low bandwidth Internet access. That would also explain the visual anomalies you experienced during the broadcast. A lot of streaming isn't strictly "real time", either. One example is when using a streaming source like Hulu LiveTV...there's a slight delay for re-broadcast compared to running a "station's" individual app which is also slightly delayed from actual broadcast OTA.

I will add, however, that it wasn't a nice thing that you were cut off from the end of the event like you were.

Thank you Jim. I'm just amazed that a "live stream" could be behind. I guess I don't understand how it works. I don't think it's recorded because I can no longer find it. Maybe my computer stores it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dave Fritz

Thank you Jim. I'm just amazed that a "live stream" could be behind. I guess I don't understand how it works. I don't think it's recorded because I can no longer find it. Maybe my computer stores it?

---

If you tell them about this, perhaps the collage would agree to not cut off the live stream for some period of time following the game, perhaps simply put up a photo or college promotional screen for a few minutes (or for how long "way behind" is). There may be others with the same experience and unless someone tells them they may never know.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dave Fritz

Thank you Jim. I'm just amazed that a "live stream" could be behind. I guess I don't understand how it works. I don't think it's recorded because I can no longer find it. Maybe my computer stores it?

---

Speaking technically, it's "stored" at multiple points between the source and your eyes. The time for that storage is generally very short. That's the "buffering" I was mentioning in my original reply. In order to distribute content efficiently and account for varying bandwidth availability, there are "content delivery nodes" that accept the stream, temporarily (or permanently) store it and then re-broadcast it on-demand. This is all invisible to you normally and just part of the infrastructure "out there". By on-demand, I mean that there are multiple streams from there to various endpoints, some of which can take things "full speed" and others, like yours on low bandwidth Internet service, at a less robust pace. Your endpoint also will buffer content before getting it to the screen. Ideally, you want the streaming and buffering to be ahead of the viewing, but with low bandwidth, that may not always be the case. So the video appears to pause while your device is getting enough new material to display it in a meaningful way.

You are likely correct that it may not have been recorded for on-demand viewing, too. That's a separate thing from the original streaming flow.

BTW, those "content delivery nodes" I mentioned are the only way that the streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and so forth could every deliver what they offer to the gazillions of endpoints that they service. There are companies out there that literally provide CDN services to make it all work. A single movie or show is stored in a larger number of places for geographic efficiency so when you select it from your streaming service's menu, signalling happens in the background and the content you want to watch is sent to you from a point that's relatively close to you, network-wise. Someone else selecting the same movie or show at the exact same time, may get the actual content from a different network point because of where they physically are. As an aside, this is also how content delivery can be limited to certain geographies based on where your IP address says you are physically...and one reason why some folks use VPNs to make it seem like they are somewhere else so they can access content from there that's not normally available to them.

Thank you for the feed back. When I told my daughter I'd contacted the school she said that was good as others had issues as well. The school replied and said they streamed all the way to the end so I asked them your question Jim: Is it archieved for on demand viewing or is it live streamed. I didn't know there was a difference if I understand your post.

One by product of the pandemic is the use of streaming by schools of sporting events. Even now, those of us in high risk groups love being able to watch the grands do their activites. I think it may be here to stay until replaced by something bigger and better.

Most if not all the livestreams we get of the grandkids are available on Utube any time afterward. So that might be an option. In a few instances the ones we watched didn't stream well but it was an issue with the host school and not on our end. That's where it being available online later has it's benefits.

Thank you Ronald. This school uses boxcast https://www.boxcast.com/ to stream. The college did send me a link to an archived copy so we can watch it later. I'm trying to find out if they offer that on their website or was this a one time deal. Tonight both granddaughters games are streamed on You Tube so that's not a problem as you said.

We have been livestreaming from church for 6 years using Livestream.com. The stream lags by only 15-30 seconds. Sounds like something else is going on.

I guess the reality is folks are getting into the live stream business due to covid so there are a lot of first time folks using it. Equipment, technique, knowledge, and experience vary a great deal. Last night we watched a volleyball match on the Big Ten Network and the quality was professional. Of course they are professionals so you'd expect it. Compare that to a little high school who is using their technology club as their resource, well, can you really expect anything else? Even within beginner users of video there is a big difference as you'd expect. We stream our church service too due to having my having a compromised immune system. I would post different services from churches on our church Facebook page and while we didn't have a permanint minister that was fine. Now that we have a minister, they're posting his message using an ipad. I think they quit and it was so bad no one was watching. The lady would forget and the battery would go dead etc. etc.

I do appeciate feed back and the information that's been shared. I've learned a lot. Thank you.