Railfan Technology > With the Net neutrality in place now, how is your video feed play

When I watch video's here on TO it seems to be worse video quality as for play back. its jerky, start and stop or very slow down loads.   Not sure if it is due to net neutrality or an old dell lap top. I do have Fios from Verizon / frontier. Not so happy with them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/18 07:53 by czuleget.

I just watched a video and it ran fine. (Cox is the provider and I have 100 mbs service.) My old Dell desktop (2010 vintage) did not do videos well, so I added a video card, which improved things a great deal. I'd still be using that unit, but the SSD I installed two years ago began to malfunction. Everything else, including the original HDD, works fine. I decided to buy a new Dell Optiflex Micro, which so far has been a great machine. 

You might try running a speed test to see what kind of download speed you're getting.

I did it is slower than i though. I have to Pay more $$ to Frontier if I want faster speed. Interesing thing is that my apple I pad work fine. There is one video i tryed to play on the I pad it was of the SP colton Diamond and ir ran fine but the sound was poor. I think that is due to thee poor video quality and not the hardware. 
Time is coming soon to shop for a new laptop. 

czuleget Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I watch video's here on TO it seems to be
> worse video quality as for play back. its jerky,
> start and stop or very slow down loads.   Not
> sure if it is due to net neutrality or an old dell
> lap top.

It is your old laptop. Graphics processing is the second highest resource usage item in a laptop. Older laptops are no where near as efficent energy and heat wise, so newer better faster graphics viewing (videos, games, etc) do not work well on older laptops.

> I do have Fios from Verizon / frontier.
> Not so happy with them.

The majority of people are not overall happy with their ISP. For good reasons.

Works just fine here on Frontier. Never a problem watching videos. I suggest you upgrade your computer if you want better video quality.
 

Stanley Jackowski
Valrico, FL

No problems watching videos, on TO or elsewhere, out here in semi - rural Oregon...
Sounds like a technical issue, NOT a political one.

Jim

czuleget Wrote:
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> Time is coming soon to shop for a new laptop. 

What some people forget is that modern video has at least two main performance bottlenecks: speed of display (GPU, or graphic processors), and compression/decompression ("codecs") which is still done mostly by CPU.

Geeks can tout the wonders of GPU, especially regarding to gaming and rendered graphics, but for videos clips (of real life), biggest resource hog is the CPU, because the data is usually compressed, then has to be decompressed in (almost) real time for playback. People who just watch videos aren't directly exposed to the importance of video compression.

You can make a reasonable guess on whether it's the network causing video playback issues. If the video playback smooth some of the time, but stops once in a while (rebuffering), then you can blame bandwidth problem on your network.

If video playback is jerky all the time, check "Task Manager" on Windows, "Acitivty Monitor" on Mac, or other performance app on your operating system to see if resource usage is high. If it is, then your CPU and/or GPU (graphics card) can't display ot decompress the video fast enough to play it smoothly.

YouTube can "adjust" the decompression codec while playing back to balance quality/smoothness more or less automatically based on how your computer is performing. I've been able to watch videos without much problems on older computers because of that. I don't think TO does that.  Several years ago, they had to change their default video player due to licensing issues, and many Mac owners suffered performance issues because of that - that was mostly due to "older but faster" codecs no longer being supported.

So I suspect your old Dell laptop has too slow of a CPU to be able to decompress modern video clips. Just arming you with more knowledge when you shop for the next computer. 

Additionally, it's the LACK of net neutrality. Net Neutrality is no longer in place. Ended 6/11/18.

nydepot Wrote:
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> Additionally, it's the LACK of net neutrality. Net
> Neutrality is no longer in place. Ended 6/11/18.

And the whole world didn't come to an end like Todd and many other techies said it would?

junctiontower Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> nydepot Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Additionally, it's the LACK of net neutrality.
> Net
> > Neutrality is no longer in place. Ended
> 6/11/18.
>
> And the whole world didn't come to an end like
> Todd and many other techies said it would?

These things take time.  It will take the corporations awhile to blackmail the heavy users of bandwidth.  They'll start with the big fish and eventually work their way down to sites the size of Trainorders.  It's easier for Comcast and Charter to extract money from Youtube and Netflix than it is Todd.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/18 21:50 by radar.

I don't watch too many videos and I don't have access to a "regular" provider relying on a Verizon cell type system so maybe I am dumb but can't you download them, when I do they play fine.

Bob

radar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> These things take time.  It will take the
> corporations awhile to blackmail the heavy users
> of bandwidth.  They'll start with the big fish
> and eventually work their way down to sites the
> size of Trainorders.  It's easier for Comcast and
> Charter to extract money from Youtube and Netflix
> than it is Todd.

Money is just one factor in why net neutrality was "eliminated."

"Advances" in video technology has made content providers focus on "video quality" instead of quality of content, for example 4K video. No matter how good compression technology is, higher resolution video will take significantly more bandwidth. My opinion as a casual observer is that network bandwidth has not caught up with video bandwidth.

The biggest fault of the end of neutrality (which no one wants to say directly) is that due to unregulated and reckless promotion of streaming video on the Internet, there's a shortage of network bandwidth. This isn't too different from the principles of "yield pricing" which we see in the transportation industry - those who pay more get more due to capacity shortage. Frankly, since we so blindly accept "yield pricing" as something that's "great", I don't see why we deserve net neutrality. FYI, I don't like yield pricing, and I like net neutrality, but I'm being snarky.

Best solution to preserve net neutrality is to keep "mainstream video" (like sports, traditional TV shows, etc.) on the airwaves and off the Internet. The "market" is too greedy to figure THAT out, and people are too addicted to their Smartphones and other mobile devices to care.

Thank you cchan006 for the impartial and thoughtful response.  It is a welcome view of the situation.  I am in IT and have followed this for a long time.  Your reply made me think just a little different, different than the mainstream opinion of the subject.  Thank you!

cchan006 --
THANK you VERY much for your very insightful and well-thought-out post!   
 
And THANK you VERY, VERY much for being against "yield pricing," in which the price of everything goes up and down like a yo-yo.  I cannot STAND yield pricing!  IMO, charge what the product or service coststo make or procide, plus what is needed for a *fair* profit, and *that* should be what the price is.

And though I do like high-def for some things -- mostly scenery ad some train and airplance videos -- it is not at all necessary for most things.    And I agree that no TV shows or sports events should be live-streamed.  They use up far too much bandwidth.  I know, I know -- people want to know what is happening *now* with sporting events, but l;ive-streaming them uses up too much bandwidth.  And few TV programs are even worth watching these days, so IMO they should never be live-streamed.

Charlie -- 
Keep up the good work with your well-informed and insightful posts!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/18 01:08 by Margaret_SP_fan.