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Jenifer Griffard
I have Netflix through my Comcast Xfinity bundle. It's not available on the streamling Xfinity app on my Roku TV or other devices. And I don't have an account number to access Netflix as standalone app. How do I access Netflix beyond my internet/TV account/phone? Do I have an Netflix account number through Comcast?
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.
My IPad Air will not stream Netflix in HD. I have a 30mbps connection according to speed test yet I can only get grainy less that SD quality. Every once in a while the pic snaps into HD for a few seconds then back to junk. I've tried resetting network settings, installing the app. I even replaced my IPad with a new one to make sure it wasn't the hardware. I suppose it could just be the app but wanted to check if anyone else is experiencing this. Thanks for your feedback.
So, some streaming media services allow you to adjust the streaming resolution/speed so lower end broadband users can optimize their media connection speeds to be able to stream audio/video content on more than one or two devices simultaneously.
I have exactly the same problem as you described - no HD on Netfilx or other video streaming services (HBO Go, Stars, etc), except the occasional snap in and out of HD. Have had the iPad Air since Christmas and the same problem and the problem has been present throughout. I noticed on the corners of the video image that it looks like two overlaid images slightly offset - it's as if there is a problem with the video chips or drivers. Since the problem occurs with Netflix and other streaming services, I doubt it's the app, unless they all have the same incompatibility.
There is apparently a problem with Netflix on the iPad Air not playing in HD, I have seen this from several sources online. I have the same problem with my iPad Air. I have about 80 mps connection and everything else streams perfectly in HD except for Netflix. It's just unbelievable, the Air has been out for 5 months and they still don't have this fixed and that it hasn't been reported more widely. It's the same thing with the yellow tint and uneven color on the iPad Air screen, totally ignored by Apple and the tech press. However, this is a Netflix problem so you can't really blame Apple for this.
Some have blamed Comcast because Netflix does seem to stream in HD during the night/early morning hours - about 1:00 AM to about 6:00 AM. Give it a try and see if you get the same result. So the argument is that Comcast is somehow restricting HD services for Netflix during 'primetime hours'. However, this might just be a conspiracy theory. Although, it is interesting, particulary if your able to stream Netflix in HD during those hours...
Peacock, which offers two plans priced at $6 and $12 a month, will increase its prices to $8 a month for Peacock Premium and $14 for Peacock Premium Plus in July. The service is available for free to certain Xfinity internet or Instacart Plus subscribers. The Comcast-owned platform offers live sports and originals as well as content from NBC, Universal and Bravo. Netflix's ad-supported plan costs $7 a month, while Apple TV Plus costs $10 a month. If you have standalone subscriptions for each of these, this new StreamSaver bundle could save you a total of $10 a month.
Streaming bundles have become a trend in 2024. Comcast's news came on the heels of Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery unveiling their own joint bundle that packages Disney Plus, Hulu and Max. The two entertainment titans revealed that the bundle will launch this summer in the US and give viewers access to content from ABC, CNN, DC, Disney, Food Network, FX, HBO, HGTV, Hulu, Marvel, Pixar, Warner Bros. and other brands. You'll be able to choose from ad-supported and ad-free plans in the bundle, and subscriptions will be available through any of the three streaming platforms.
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