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Streaming and downloading are the same thing

Chris pointed at a piece in the NYT where they say:

Streaming video, unlike downloads, never resides on a viewer's computer. It usually cannot be replayed as a downloaded file can be, which is another reason that content creators like it.

Pay attention, especially any lawyers hanging around at the back.

Here's the important difference between streaming and downloading:

1. when you download something you are sent a bag of bits in any old order
2. when you stream something you are sent a bag of bits and can start watching them before they've all arrived

That makes streaming harder to do, as a server, and theoretically nicer for the end user. The down-side is that once you have that harder performance problem of sending enough bits quickly enough it gets tricky. You can buy yourself better performance by distributing some (or all) of the information from a central server, but that gets expensive.

The next thing you can do is just to use fewer bits, that makes it both cheaper, and the technical problem gets easier. The consequence is to make the quality suck, to the point of being unwatchable for me. Content owners are well placed to compete on quality, right now they're losing to the ad-hoc torrent people.

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