Sometimes there is buffering while streaming videos/movies. When you pause the video and come back much later, why isn’t the whole video loaded?

Question

Sometimes there is buffering while streaming videos/movies. When you pause the video and come back much later, why isn’t the whole video loaded?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Video streaming sites are protective of their bandwidth. If you pause the video it will build up a buffer but it won’t buffer the entire video. That’s because there’s no guarantee that you’re going to come back. If the streaming service sent you the entire file but it turns out that you wandered off to bed and aren’t coming back. they just wasted their bandwidth sending you the entire video.