For example, watching a paid soccer online broadcast – if a lot of people watch it then the quality will drop and it will start buffering and lagging. But that never happens with a soccer TV broadcast no matter how many people watch it. Why is that?
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When you broadcast a TV show, the signal is basically sent to everyone and everyone with a TV can choose to listen to the signal or ignore it. This is easiest to picture with an over the air broadcast, but cable works in a similar way. When you have a TV station, you’re broadcasting it from an antenna, so anyone who that signal reaches can turn on their TV and tune to that channel to watch it.
The way online video works is that, if you’re watching something, the video signal is being sent to you specifically. If 1000 people are watching the same online stream, then the streaming provider is sending 1000 video streams out. As more people start watching your stream, it becomes harder for the service to send video to all those people, so they might have to start sending a lower quality version of the video to make it easier.
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