Yes, and its driven by consumers. Unless your content operates in a very small niche, "real time" is far less important that continuity. In rough order of pre

Yes, and its driven by consumers. Unless your content operates in a very small niche, "real time" is far less important that continuity. In rough order of preference for the consumer: 1) it starts fast 2) it never stops playing 3) It looks colourful 4) Good quality sound 5) Good quality picture 10) latency one of the main reason why "live" broadcast over digital TV has a stock latency of >1 second is FEC. (forward error correction) this allows a continuous stream of high quality over a noisy transport mechanism. (yes, there is the local operating rules for indecent behaviour, and switch and effects delays, which account for 10 seconds and >250ms respectively) For IPtv its buffer. Having a stuttering stream will cause your consumers to switch off/go elsewhere. One of the reasons why realplayer held on for so long was that it was the only system that could dynamically switch bitrates seamless, and reliably. There is a reason why netflix et al start off with a low quality stream, and then switchout to HD 30 seconds in, its that people want to watch it now, with no interruption. They have millions of data points to back that up.