I don’t quite understand the difference in the technology. An example I’m thinking of is that if you’re streaming a TV program online that has a ton of simultaneous viewership (say, the Super Bowl), you’re liable to run into bandwidth issues—buffering, freezes, pixelated video, etcetera, as the servers are taxed with keeping up with the demand of all the viewers.
The same thing doesn’t happen with cable tv, even though it is also a digital signal coming over a wire. No matter how many people are watching, the cable tv provider is able to put out perfect quality video to everyone with no buffer time.
What is the difference in the tech that allows cable tv to do this but not online streaming video?
In: Technology
I think you are getting a lot of partial answers that are possibly not answering your question.
Cable TV continuously broadcasts and each channel has its own dedicated frequency and bandwidth and is delivered over its own infrastructure. in traditional cable a connection is made between you and the cable company and the each channel has a frequency and bandwidth and the only data in that connection is the cable TV content.
It’s dedicated so it’s designed to always be able to have the bandwidth to deliver what you are watching. It’s also independent of the number of viewers that are watching. An ELI5 analogy might be that if you watch a movie theater person it doesn’t matter how many people there are the movie looks the same.
Streaming is sent over a shared Internet connection that is not dedicated and a stream is being sent just to you. You requested the data and you can pause or fast forward or rewind. It’s not dedicated and the bandwidth is dependent on the network fabric between you and the provider. To extend the ELI5 analogy of the movie theater. Everytime somebody watches a stream it’d be like the movie theater needs to set up a private room with a VCR and play the movie just for you. There are limits to how many rooms that can be created.
There are hybrid delivery models that blend the two as well.
TLDR: CableTV is sent over a dedicated line and is number of viewers agnostic. Streaming is not sent over a dedicated line and has a maximum number of viewers.
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