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Last night I was watching the State of the Union via C-SPAN's YouTube stream. My husband walked into the living room, having just driven back from an errand, an

Last night I was watching the State of the Union via C-SPAN's YouTube stream. My husband walked into the living room, having just driven back from an errand, and jokingly recited the next several sentences along with Trump. He had been listening to the local public radio station in the car, and by comparing the TV to the stereo's FM receiver I was surprised to find that the youtube stream was about a full minute behind the radio. I had expected that YouTube would lag behind traditional media that tend to be using things like dedicated satellite relay capacity to spread live events to broadcasters, but I was very surprised at how large the difference was - one that seems to notice in today's world of people commenting on public events on real-time media like Twitter. Indeed, watching Twitter I could see responses to parts of the speech that I hadn't seen yet. Must really be interesting for sporting events where a social media post about play could "spoil" the game.

puzzle 8y ago
That's interesting. For the London 2012 Olympic Games, YT had the rights to live stream in tens of countries in Asia and Africa, basically everywhere where the Internet rights hadn't been bought by broadcasters. For latency and reliability, they ran new fiber from 30 Rock (NBC) to a Google POP. Unrelated, Google Fiber also got a license for antennas in the Iowa datacenter: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1 In this case, though, it's not YouTube pulling streams from the source, it's C-SPAN pushing them. I wonder what kind of setup is in place there.
- jcrawfordor 8y ago
  It would have been interesting to compare the different live streams for latency since at least a half dozen news organizations were putting SOTU on YouTube - an experiment for next time.
woodpanel 8y ago
> Must really be interesting for sporting events where a social media post about play could "spoil" the game. It gets even better: Every WorldCup game I've watched in the last 2 decades served as a survey for who had the lowest latency in the neighbourhood (because the neighbours cheers would arrive quicker than the image of the actual goal).
rafaelm 8y ago
Trying to watch a football (soccer) game on DirecTV, while your neighbors are watching it on cable or open air sucks. You hear the "goooal!" screams at least a full 20 seconds before they are scored :)
resfirestar 8y ago
For a double-livestream twist: I watched the Super Bowl on the CBS website, and during the second half muted that stream to listen to the Chapo Trap House commentary, which was streaming on Twitch. Even after whatever small delay is caused by Twitch (the article mentions Twitch is quite low latency compared to Amazon, at least), they were mentioning stuff about 40 seconds before I saw it.
clairity 8y ago
yes, the lag is annoying both ways - from radio to streaming app where 30 seconds are repeated - or vice versa, where you have a 30 second gap. but nba game streams seem to be about 15 seconds behind, which is the perfect amount of time to be able to see replays by just looking down at my ipad (that's streaming the same game as the tv). =)

puzzle 8y ago

That's interesting. For the London 2012 Olympic Games, YT had the rights to live stream in tens of countries in Asia and Africa, basically everywhere where the Internet rights hadn't been bought by broadcasters. For latency and reliability, they ran new fiber from 30 Rock (NBC) to a Google POP. Unrelated, Google Fiber also got a license for antennas in the Iowa datacenter: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1 In this case, though, it's not YouTube pulling streams from the source, it's C-SPAN pushing them. I wonder what kind of setup is in place there.

jcrawfordor 8y ago
It would have been interesting to compare the different live streams for latency since at least a half dozen news organizations were putting SOTU on YouTube - an experiment for next time.

woodpanel 8y ago

> Must really be interesting for sporting events where a social media post about play could "spoil" the game. It gets even better: Every WorldCup game I've watched in the last 2 decades served as a survey for who had the lowest latency in the neighbourhood (because the neighbours cheers would arrive quicker than the image of the actual goal).

rafaelm 8y ago

Trying to watch a football (soccer) game on DirecTV, while your neighbors are watching it on cable or open air sucks. You hear the "goooal!" screams at least a full 20 seconds before they are scored :)

resfirestar 8y ago

For a double-livestream twist: I watched the Super Bowl on the CBS website, and during the second half muted that stream to listen to the Chapo Trap House commentary, which was streaming on Twitch. Even after whatever small delay is caused by Twitch (the article mentions Twitch is quite low latency compared to Amazon, at least), they were mentioning stuff about 40 seconds before I saw it.

clairity 8y ago

yes, the lag is annoying both ways - from radio to streaming app where 30 seconds are repeated - or vice versa, where you have a 30 second gap. but nba game streams seem to be about 15 seconds behind, which is the perfect amount of time to be able to see replays by just looking down at my ipad (that's streaming the same game as the tv). =)