6 Surprising Truths About Video Streaming Service – TN Marketing
With a variety of viewing options at your disposal, streaming is the newest and hottest way to watch television in America. In this article, we’ll go over a few truths about how streaming sites work from the perspective of user experience. With an influx of new users each day, there’s more knowledge than ever before available on what goes into making these platforms run smoothly. This article is just one glimpse into what it takes to provide quality service for your audience. TN Marketing is a global video streaming service.
Truth #1: Fast Streaming Isn’t Everything
In a race to be the fastest site, Netflix has been clocking in between 8X and 16X faster than other streaming sites for several years now. They averaged around 10Mbps in 2010, but are now averaging close to 30Mbps for their customers. The problem is that faster isn’t always better. Streaming sites such as YouTube and Pandora also have more bandwidth-intense service options available than Netflix does, which requires them to sacrifice speed for reliability.
Truth #2: Fast Streaming Isn’t Everything Part 2
Netflix has been working hard to give customers a more reliable service, making them the fastest streaming site in the United States, but that speed doesn’t always translate over to a quality viewing experience. While load times for videos are fairly quick, fast connections can often lead to buffering issues with content. Since 2010, Netflix has tried to focus on this problem by moving from one protocol to another in order to find one that’s both fast and reliable for users. Their newest platform is called OpenConnect and allows customers of ISPs that support it (AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS) to use their own devices as a way of connecting directly with Netflix servers. These devices come with a variety of connection speeds from 10Mbps to 1Gbps, and the platform’s flexibility means that providers can adjust the ratio of client-to-server connections based on the current level of network traffic.
Truth #3: Most Streaming Sites Don’t Need That Much Bandwidth
Theoretically, if all internet users started streaming content to their televisions 24 hours a day at 1080P resolution, it would take them over 6 years to use up all the bandwidth in America. As streaming sites continue to gain popularity and more people begin using them, their servers are becoming increasingly efficient at managing bandwidth usage while still offering high-resolution viewing experiences. That’s why the amount of bandwidth used by individual users varies so much, depending on the amount of content they’re trying to view. The average Netflix customer in the United States streams around 1GB of data a month, while YouTube users watch around 4GB.
Truth #4: DVD Quality Isn’t Always A Good Choice
Netflix claims that their streaming service offers access to over 18,000 movies and TV shows for purchase or streaming on DVD quality. However, that’s not always a good option for users. While your typical DVD player can still squeeze out a bit more detail than a HDTV can handle, smaller numbers mean lower quality. When you’re viewing something on a screen much smaller than your TV, you might get away with viewing the movie in SD and not notice any detriment to the viewing experience. Even though they’re still capable of returning a decent picture, streaming sites usually offer higher-quality options for standard-definition content because it’s just easier to do. When you buy or rent a movie or TV episode from one of these sites, you can choose whether to stream it in SD or HD.
Truth #5: Video Quality Is Affected By Network Conditions
The connection speeds found at your home or office aren’t necessarily the ones that are advertised by your Internet service provider. In fact, they’re usually much slower than that.
Truth #6: The Curse Of Buffering
Video buffering occurs when data is transferred from a source to a destination at a rate slower than the source can process it. Typically, it happens because your internet connection isn’t fast enough, but it could also have something to do with the service you’re watching. If buffering occurs regularly for you on one site and not another, you might want to try switching to check if your problem follows you to the new site. If it does, then there’s most likely something wrong with your connection or ISP (you might need an upgrade).
