Broadcast television in an IP world

Sat Nov 18 02:54:38 UTC 2017

On 11/17/2017 09:45 PM, Jay Hennigan wrote:
>> Does multicast have any future? Netflix, YouTube, et al does not use it.
>> People want instant replay and a catalogue to select from. Except for 
>> sport
>> events, live TV has no advantage so why even try to optimize for it?
> 
> It does for delivering live content. Local programming, news, sports, 
> C-SPAN, etc. Canned program content such as TV series, not so much. 
> On-demand not at all.
> 
> 

I can think of a few other good uses (semi- to non-topical):

1. Multi-party video conferencing.  Audio is applicable, too, but the 
bandwidth requirements are low enough you can just unicast it all.

2. Platform upgrades for extremely popular consumer devices.  Think a 
rolling multicast stream at a few bitrates for e.g. the latest iOS, 
Windows, flagship Android handset, etc. upgrades.  This might or might 
not work better than CDN'ing the bejeezus out of it depending on your 
network topology.
-- 
Brandon Martin