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Akinlolu Bellotti
I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. I tried to create as coherent a narrative as I could. If there are any errors I'd be more than happy to fix them. Keep in mind this article is not a technical deep dive. It's a big picture type article. For example, I don't mention the word microservice even once :-)
Given our discussion in the What is Cloud Computing? chapter, you might expect Netflix to serve video using AWS. Press play in a Netflix application and video stored in S3 would be streamed from S3, over the internet, directly to your device.
Another relevant factoid is Netflix is subscription based. Members pay Netflix monthly and can cancel at any time. When you press play to chill on Netflix, it had better work. Unhappy members unsubscribe.
The client is the user interface on any device used to browse and play Netflix videos. It could be an app on your iPhone, a website on your desktop computer, or even an app on your Smart TV. Netflix controls each and every client for each and every device.
Everything that happens before you hit play happens in the backend, which runs in AWS. That includes things like preparing all new incoming video and handling requests from all apps, websites, TVs, and other devices.
In 2007 Netflix introduced their streaming video-on-demand service that allowed subscribers to stream television series and films via the Netflix website on personal computers, or the Netflix software on a variety of supported platforms, including smartphones and tablets, digital media players, video game consoles, and smart TVs.
Netflix succeeded. Netflix certainly executed well, but they were late to the game, and that helped them. By 2007 the internet was fast enough and cheap enough to support streaming video services. That was never the case before. The addition of fast, low-cost mobile bandwidth and the introduction of powerful mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, has made it easier and cheaper for anyone to stream video at any time from anywhere. Timing is everything.
Building out a datacenter is a lot of work. Ordering equipment takes a long time. Installing and getting all the equipment working takes a long time. And as soon they got everything working they would run out of capacity, and the whole process had to start over again.
The long lead times for equipment forced Netflix to adopt what is known as a vertical scaling strategy. Netflix made big programs that ran on big computers. This approach is called building a monolith. One program did everything.
What Netflix was good at was delivering video to their members. Netflix would rather concentrate on getting better at delivering video rather than getting better at building datacenters. Building datacenters was not a competitive advantage for Netflix, delivering video is.
It took more than eight years for Netflix to complete the process of moving from their own datacenters to AWS. During that period Netflix grew its number of streaming customers eightfold. Netflix now runs on several hundred thousand EC2 instances.
The advantage of having three regions is that any one region can fail, and the other regions will step in handle all the members in the failed region. When a region fails, Netflix calls this evacuating a region.
The header image is meant to intrigue you, to draw you into selecting a video. The idea is the more compelling the header image, the more likely you are to watch a video. And the more videos you watch, the less likely you are to unsubscribe from Netflix.
The first thing Netflix does is spend a lot of time validating the video. It looks for digital artifacts, color changes, or missing frames that may have been caused by previous transcoding attempts or data transmission problems.
A pipeline is simply a series of steps data is put through to make it ready for use, much like an assembly line in a factory. More than 70 different pieces of software have a hand in creating every video.
The idea behind a CDN is simple: put video as close as possible to users by spreading computers throughout the world. When a user wants to watch a video, find the nearest computer with the video on it and stream to the device from there.
In 2007, when Netflix debuted its new streaming service, it had 36 million members in 50 countries, watching more than a billion hours of video each month, streaming multiple terabits of content per second.
At the same time, Netflix was also devoting a lot of effort into all the AWS services we talked about earlier. Netflix calls the services in AWS its control plane. Control plane is a telecommunications term identifying the part of the system that controls everything else. In your body, your brain is the control plane; it controls everything else.
In 2011, Netflix realized at its scale it needed a dedicated CDN solution to maximize network efficiency. Video distribution is a core competency for Netflix and could be a huge competitive advantage.
The number of OCAs on a site depends on how reliable Netflix wants the site to be, the amount of Netflix traffic (bandwidth) that is delivered from that site, and the percentage of traffic a site allows to be streamed.
Within a location, a popular video like House of Cards is copied to many different OCAs. The more popular a video, the more servers it will be copied to. Why? If there was only one copy of a very popular video, streaming the video to members would overwhelm the server. As they say, many hands make light work.
Right now, up to 100% of Netflix content is being served from within ISP networks. This reduces costs by relieving internet congestion for ISPs. At the same time, Netflix members experience a high-quality viewing experience. And network performance improves for everyone.
What may not be immediately obvious is that the OCAs are independent of each other. OCAs act as self-sufficient video-serving archipelagos. Members streaming from one OCA are not affected when other OCAs fail.
We're glad you are here so we can best assist you. To use casting, the supported app must be installed on your mobile device and Roku TV. You must also connect your phone or tablet to the same wireless network as your Roku device. You can do this wirelessly with supported apps like YouTube and Netflix by opening the casting icon on the mobile device on your phone or tablet and selecting your Roku device.
I have never been able to use Android's native cast (Cast Connect) to cast through my Roku devices. Some of my previous Android phones were able to use Google Cast to cast some content (ie. Youtube, Netflix, etc-- that symbol that allowed user to cast to TV from within the opened app.)
I just use third party casting apps now when needing to cast content from my Android mobile devices to the Roku device. My personal preference is Web Video Caster (WVC), but others like Castify and Tubio work fine also.
With all the above, you install the app on your mobile device or phone (all can be found in the Play Store), and then you install a companion receiver on your Roku device. (all found in the Roku Channel Store).
The apps mentioned above are free (with ads on phone), and all offer paid features also. WVC is a one-time purchase of $3 or $4 for an ad-free full featured lifetime use, but the free version works perfectly fine. (a few additional features with the paid version).
Is there a way to cast from my mobile device to my Roku tv using Androids screen cast feature or if I'm in a mobile app for which an equivalent app is unavailable on Roku tv? I've been able to do these functions on my Android TV.
You can of course cast to your Roku TV what you are already watching on your mobile device. To use casting, the supported app must be installed on both your mobile device and your Roku streaming device. You must also make sure to connect your phone or tablet to the same wireless network as your Roku device.
You can do this wirelessly with supported apps like YouTube and Netflix by opening the casting icon on a mobile device on your phone or tablet and selecting your Roku device. The channel will launch automatically on your Roku device and playback will begin.
If you are unable to cast Netflix from your phone to your Roku TV even though you have downloaded the Netflix app on both devices and they are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, there are a few things you can try:
Note: The Screen Cast icon may be located in different locations depending on your Android phone model and version of Android. If you can't find it in the Quick Settings panel, try searching for it in the Settings app. Additionally, not all Android phones support screen casting, so make sure your device is compatible before attempting to cast.
This might be a new low for FM in all honesty. Last year FM Touch was stuck behind the Apple Arcade subscription (seen no mention of what's happening with that), but now mobile is stuck behind a Netflix subscription.. Do you know your own player base? FMM is always one of the top paid games every single year, so clearly makes you money. WHY?
Absolute lunacy, I have purchased every iteration of the handheld/mobile version and now am unable to play it, I guess SI truly do hate their fans, I can only hope that it is exclusive for a month and then released wider.
The cheapest Netflix sub is 4.99 per month (I dont even know if that includes their gaming side). FMM mobile is usually priced 9.99. In 2 months you've paid the same and if want to keep playing have to keep paying. No FAQ is going to make it better.
If its going to be a Netflix exclusive its a bad decision, forcing people to pay a subscription will lead to less people actually paying for it and leading to more piracy ( considering a lot already pirate the game)
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