tobpar youngest frazier
Phoebe Sibilio
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.
But there's been some welcome change brewing. Netflix, for one, has been experimenting with different release schedules lately, announcing last week that the fourth season of Stranger Things will be released in two parts. The final season of Money Heist also premiered in two installments, and horror trilogy Fear Street debuted weekly. HBO Max released an episode of And Just Like That weekly, as it did with Peacemaker, a schedule that often leaves viewers in anticipation of what's next. Disney Plus employed that same weekly structure for Marvel shows like Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, adding to the hype and suspense before each episode.
In fact, on Saturday evening, I decided to start watching The Gilded Age, the new HBO period drama from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. I was delighted to see that instead of a long list of episodes under season 1 in the HBO Max app, I had just four to watch before being caught up -- quite an improvement from a nine-episode dump. Of course, this is because the show airs on the HBO channel weekly, but it was a nice reminder of the joys of a regular TV schedule. It made watching more enjoyable, knowing I wasn't just trying to cross items off a to-do list.
The current TV landscape often makes us feel like we're in a mad dash to consume as much content as possible, lest we stumble across spoilers or miss out on all the hype. We want to relate to friends and strangers online and share our own hot takes on the show everybody's talking about. But just when I feel caught up on the latest craze, another show captures our collective attention. If I want to keep up, I need to dedicate several more hours to binging that show, too. Usually, the time commitment doesn't feel worth it.
Of course, streaming services want you to spend more time on their platforms. But in the end, they have to cater to what viewers want, and it's noteworthy that a handful of shows are reverting to the weekly model that TV followed for decades. Could it be they're sensing our burnout? Are we just missing too much content in this crazy race? The fact that I'm complaining about how stressful it can be to unwind with television is a testament to how we should perhaps readjust how we go about doing so.
When Netflix started dropping full seasons of original shows, it was a revelation for viewers who'd enjoyed binge-watching their favorite series on DVD. Now they could replicate those habits with new shows too. But the TV landscape has changed, and with it, our tastes.
Releasing episodes weekly won't save us from the never-ending content deluge, but it does give us a chance to come up for air. Without the option to binge a season in one sitting, we may be more inclined to do something more productive -- or to simply watch something else. I like to think these streaming changes are an acknowledgement that audiences want more balance. Perhaps the old-school ways of watching television weren't all meant to be overthrown.
\"GMFB\" reacts to new Netflix \"RECEIVER\" series following stars of the NFL including Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel and tight end George Kittle and Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown.
"Receiver" is an eight-episode series set to premiere in Summer 2024 as a continuation of Netflix's relationship with the NFL that first began with "Quarterback," which hit the Netflix Global Top 10 for three weeks last year.
The series is produced by NFL Films, Omaha Productions and 2PM Productions, with executive producers Ross Ketover, Pat Kelleher and Keith Cossrow from NFL Films, executive producers Peyton Manning and Jamie Horowitz from Omaha Productions, and executive producer Patrick Mahomes from 2PM Productions.
"The natural progression is from a pass to a catch, so we're excited to dive into the 'Receiver' world after the success of our 'Quarterback' series," said Gabe Spitzer, vice president, nonfiction sports, Netflix. "NFL Films, Omaha Productions and 2PM Productions have delivered again in finding unique and dynamic athletes who will further highlight the drama of this sport on and off the field."
90f70e40cf