<story><title>How the BBC and ITV are fixing delays on World Cup live streams</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/article/england-vs-croatia-live-stream-bbc-iplayer-itv</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really interesting to see the tech being deployed to fix this problem. But it also amazes me how complicated we&amp;#x27;ve managed to make things. In the UK in particular - just a few years ago the vast majority of people received their TV through over-the-air broadcast. It&amp;#x27;s instant and scales infinitely, kind of beautiful simplicity, technically speaking.&lt;p&gt;Sports are a good test case, not just for latency but sheer demand. I worry that we&amp;#x27;ll face some kind of natural disaster in the not too distant future that&amp;#x27;ll make us wonder why we abandoned the resilience of OTA broadcast.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>laumars</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t disagree with your point &lt;i&gt;per se&lt;/i&gt; but you are over simplifying things. Here is my take after working in the industry:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s instant&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It isn&amp;#x27;t. There are still latency delays with digital encoders, transmitter hops, etc even with OTA signals. It&amp;#x27;s just the equipment has gotten so good over the years that the latency has been pushed right down but it did used to be a lot worse. The same will happen with IP streaming given time.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;scales infinitely&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t. You need geostationary satellites &amp;#x2F; multiple transmission towers, and all that only provides you a finite number of channels. In fact digital streams are actually much cheaper to scale up, which is why so many broadcasters are moving into this territory (and why I currently have a job)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;kind of beautiful simplicity, technically speaking&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Superficially yes. But if you spend any amount of time around OTA broadcasters (as I have) you&amp;#x27;ll see there is a hell of a lot of complexity hidden from sight. In fact since OTA broadcasts are still digital streams served from content stored in digital formats, a lot of the technology used for internet streaming is the same for OTA broadcasts. So there is an argument for the simplicity of just serving that digital stream via IP rather than radio waves (or are you suggesting we go back to analogue as well? Because that also introduces a lot of complexity but of a different nature, like having to giant robotic cabs filled with hundreds of magnetic taps that all have to be wound to the right point; and a dependency on the postal service delivering those tapes since you now cannot just download assets from the content owners).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying there isn&amp;#x27;t a lot of new complexity with IP streaming but I do think it&amp;#x27;s more pronounced because:&lt;p&gt;1&amp;#x2F; we work in IT so follow the technology more closely than we do for OTA broadcasting&lt;p&gt;2&amp;#x2F; it&amp;#x27;s still a relatively young industry so there are a lot warts that haven&amp;#x27;t been cleaned up (much like how OTA broadcasting used to be a lot less polished when the technology there was still evolving).</text></comment>
<story><title>How the BBC and ITV are fixing delays on World Cup live streams</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/article/england-vs-croatia-live-stream-bbc-iplayer-itv</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really interesting to see the tech being deployed to fix this problem. But it also amazes me how complicated we&amp;#x27;ve managed to make things. In the UK in particular - just a few years ago the vast majority of people received their TV through over-the-air broadcast. It&amp;#x27;s instant and scales infinitely, kind of beautiful simplicity, technically speaking.&lt;p&gt;Sports are a good test case, not just for latency but sheer demand. I worry that we&amp;#x27;ll face some kind of natural disaster in the not too distant future that&amp;#x27;ll make us wonder why we abandoned the resilience of OTA broadcast.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>outworlder</author><text>Indeed, that&amp;#x27;s a bit silly. WE are calling these things &amp;#x27;broadcast&amp;#x27;, while most implementations are really unicast. This works really great for things like netflix, where you can start watching whatever you want, independently.&lt;p&gt;But in this case we really want actual broadcasts. Talk about square pegs and round holes...</text></comment>