The Invention That Made Streaming Video Possible - The Lightbulb Moment

The early days of online video were plagued by low resolution, stamp-sized video, and unbearable buffering times. But one day that all changed. In the late 90s one breakthrough technology revolutionized streaming video, setting the foundation for the era of Netflix.
This is The Lightbulb Moment. A Cheddar and CuriosityStream Original Series. The show that uncovers the surprising impact of less-celebrated inventions and the moments of inspiration that made them possible.
Watch 13 minute versions here on Cheddar's KZbin page. You can also watch the full 22 minute episodes on CuriosityStream and on Cheddar's live network Wednesdays, at 8 p.m.
curiositystream.com/cheddar​​
Subscribe to Cheddar on KZbin: chdr.tv/subscribe
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[@AveryTalksAboutStuff]

Watching this today on youtube while streaming something else in the background feels like I'm dunking on my 90s self

[@hull_k0gan641]

Lol. Future flex.

[@PersonManManManMan]

Get rekt your 90s self

[@dickJohnsonpeter]

I think there's about 7 things streaming data right now in my house. 2 phones, 2 TVs and 3 light bulbs. They're also encrypting and decrypting on both ends as well as routing through VPNs somewhere else in the world. I remember the mid 90s pretty well and wouldn't have thought about internet being anything but sitting at the computer. On the computer desk no less. Edit: 6 just turned off a TV lol. 7 now. Just fired up a PC. 8. Forgot about a smart outlet. I'll shut up now we get the point that internet is faster now.

[@user-wv1in4pz2w]

just imagine what it will be like in another 30 years

[@theonlyrealcdub]

@@dickJohnsonpeter it is amazing but even 9 years ago smart phones got great. I got the Samsung s3 and it blew my mind that it loaded faster on lte than anything I previously experienced on wifi

[@moetama_]

Network engineers and computer scientist are under appreciated

[@kz03jd]

Math is SEVERELY under appreciated

[@moetama_]

@@kz03jd yes!

[@stewray4852]

damn rights.

[@kz03jd]

@@stewray4852 huh? What rights are you referring to?

[@jasongracesonofzeus]

True. They get paid well tho.

[@slavko5666]

*People with slow af internet* : "huh?!"

[@DyslexicMitochondria]

My internet is so slow it took me 9 hours to upload my previous video hahaha

[@troler7147]

@@DyslexicMitochondria which is 3 min long?

[@dynomar11]

Move to a city or something lol. I've got like the low end and it's still 200mbs

[@artsmith103]

@@dynomar11 Or stay out of cities and less time on line.

[@slavko5666]

@That One Guy Who Don't Watch Fate wtf you doin' here then

[@Paul_Wetor]

Images were not necessarily tiny back then. Monitors had lower resolution, so the picture took up more of the screen. My first digital camera had a resolution of 320x240, which took up half of a 640x480 monitor. On a modern monitor, those photos now look like thumbnails.

[@anonUK]

1/4, not 1/2.

[@kaitlyn__L]

and those videos were like 96x64.... they still looked at best 2 or 3 inches big each side!

[@Paul_Wetor]

True. When my next camera was 640x480, then I was "living large".

[@bftjoe]

Tiny refers to the file size, not how big it appeared on the screen.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@bftjoe of course you could put it in full screen, but RealPlayer would default to a window showing at native size.

[@FinancialShinanigan]

Lucky kids living today never have to experience the download speeds on Limewire

[@EvlEgle]

Just depends on how many people were sharing and your connection speed. I had dsl since 2001, was fast enough for back then

[@EvlEgle]

But yeah dialup is even slow to load pictures

[@BryantMitchell]

Or the viruses

[@mikebar42]

Aol... Lol 😂

[@_Ali.]

Aaaah, Limewire, the memories 😂

[@odisclemons9700]

I remember the shock when I found out you could play a video before it was finished loading and you didnt have to download it 🤯

[@ADeeSHUPA]

didnt have to download it

[@pattonorr7572]

The concept of CDNs reminds me a lot of Amazon Fulfillment Centers

[@daijoubu4529]

Anne Amazon AWS is one of the largest CDN too lol

[@danielalorbi]

Last Mile delivery is key

[@luhem7]

Yeah, it's a very very similar concept

[@SouravBanik90]

Amazon Fulfillment Centres are like a physical manifestation of the Internet. There are hubs and everything works like request-response.

[@randeknight]

CDNs weren't all that revolutionary technologically, ISPs had been trying to host large files locally for decades, but the media companies were complaining saying that it was copyright infringement. What made CDN different was making the media distributors PAY the ISPs to host their content. As soon as they turned it around and said 'We WON'T host your files until you pay us' they suddenly wanted it.

[@DudeEM]

Berners-Lee: someone I don’t know but am thankful to.

[@metalvideos1961]

He created the www. Not the internet

[@tristanheaton2127]

Fs in the chat for the people who still buffer

[@DudeEM]

@@metalvideos1961 still, I can be thankful for that.

[@metalvideos1961]

@@DudeEM true. he created it first as the intranet. internet internet in CERN to communicate with al the scientists. but that became later world wide Web. America created the internet for the military called the ATRANET. they created the internet protocols and such. so america created the internet tim barns lee created the WWW and the Netherlands created Wi-Fi (protocol and Wi-Fi). So everybody did something to create something for the internet. also the netherlands created Bluetooth. something we still use every single day.

[@TheWaveBloke]

@@metalvideos1961 Bluetooth was invented by Nils Rydbeck at Ericsson in Sweden, and Wi-Fi was invented by a team of engineers lead by John O'Sullivan in Australia.

[@derek8482]

Amazing content, Just a small note though... sometimes the background music gets a bit too high and starts to become annoying and almost as loud as the speakers voice. Please lower the background music

[@motox2416]

Also the narrator could speak with a normal voice instead of using upspeak. It's so annoying? When someone wants to emphasize something? But they sound like they're asking a question? Inb4, no I'm not a boomer.

[@arlberg2006]

Both of these 👍

[@arlberg2006]

@motox lmao though

[@LannyBirch]

@@motox2416 It’s definitely become a paTTERN? on every viDEO? she narrates. The end of every PHRASE? that’s not the end of a SENTENCE? has that cadence. It’s really disTRACTING? from the otherwise interesting subject matter.

[@wheeliewheelie1]

It's the Valley Girl accent.

This nearly feels like a CDN ad. They not only ignored broadband connection all together but somehow forgot to mention that CDNs put the internet into the hands of few companies which can switch it off any day, in stark contrast with how the internet network was designed.

[@david203]

The broadband communication companies (Internet Service Providers) are also a "few companies which can switch it off any day". Worse, they can impose lots more fees than they currently do, such as a fee for watching too much broadband video. Congress gave them that right. Unfortunately, the popularity of the Web will continue to bring with it increasing monetization and governmental regulation (the Web is censored in some countries already). It will never return to its free beginnings. CDN storage is very popular for software like CSS and JavaScript libraries, but any website can easily be changed to have copies of the software locally rather than in a CDN. So any CDN that stopped serving content would go out of business.

[@deofetalvero]

Think of CDN as a trade-off... a consumer trade-off of democratization for convenience

[@david203]

@@deofetalvero I'm really having trouble seeing much advantage for CDNs. Repeated loading from the same server and directory takes advantage of several layers of server and client caching already. And when I actually measure the initial load time for a typical CDN reference (Bootstrap 5), it is MUCH higher. Up to about a third of a second for one small file! Here are the only advantages I can see: (1) saving global disk space (but this only really applies when the served files are large), and (2) providing convenient global references for use in published HTML example code (but this doesn't apply to published websites or to private development).

[@vancemccarthy2554]

Yes. The guy who designed the internet, gave it out free. He'd be a billionaire a million times over otherwise. He would profit from every person on the planet with an account.

[@simplyincorrigible7708]

The ISP own the internet. They are the ones whom literally own the wires in the ground.

[@kahhengyeong7947]

Imagine this with KZbin trying to stream back in those days plus the excruciating ads, I would have smashed my computer to pieces

[@matsv201]

KZbin worked quite well from.. well not Day one.. but year one. The reason why youtube become that popular is two diffrent reasons. 1: they used a multitude of decoding posibilites that made it so it pretty much always worked. 2. They had automatic adaptive bitrate that was still quite rare at that point. Video streaming was almost 10 years old when youtube started. But it never worked really good. KZbin was the first to just work. Also by that point ADSL was so common most People could get it. Back in 2005 i had both 386kbit 3G as well as 2Mbit cable modem. So bandwith wasnt really a problem. It was like a decade earlier that problem really was the main one.

[@joel3399]

No, there wasn't as mamy ads as there are now

[@sydohbaby]

All you had to do to watch KZbin on dial up was pause it, go to school, then watch it when you come home. 😂

[@metalvideos1961]

With a, phone Bill as big as the size of your house every single month lol. I had ADSL when KZbin was released. We had ADSL since Early 2000. I have used dial up but not for long. So when KZbin came out it was smooth sailing for me. Now I use fiber optic 1Gbit connection. Times have changed for the better

[@TheUnknownHarbingers]

KZbin on dialup? Woah

[@sydohbaby]

I was in like middle school I wasn’t concerned about the bill 🤭😂 My mom had a business and residential account so maybe they gave her a deal lol

[@metalvideos1961]

@@sydohbaby they often do for businesses. Still though. Be glad you don't have to use it anymore

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@metalvideos1961 back in the time you had ADSL more and more dialup providers moved to unlimited time. And if it was a local number, and you had unlimited local calling, then it was actually free. That’s how my final years (2003-2006) of dialup were like. The computer automatically hung up the line if we got a call and also if it hadn’t loaded anything in a while, so it wasn’t 100% on the phone line either.

[@msthalamus2172]

I mean, it doesn't hurt that my connection is 3,657 times faster than it was in 1998 either, you know. :D

[@paveloleynikov4715]

Also, hardware optimisation for modern codecs is crucial. Working with them with CPUs even from 2005s was pretty heavy-load task (i remember trying to watch H264 encoded video around 2010 - it was like full-bitrate MP3 on 486)

[@andywolan]

Both points are correct. Video did touch on codecs, but took took increases in computer processing for granted.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

Are you sure it wasn't 3658? Maybe 3656? Or even 3655?

[@martincerveny2284]

For me it's 8928x faster :-) 300Mbps vs 33.6kbps. Anyway I did the math and... it's 43% faster every single year from 1998 to 2021 (statistically) and at the same speed I should have 303Gbps in 2040 :-D

[@msthalamus2172]

@@ronaldgarrison8478 I mean, I have a calculator, so yeah, I'm sure.

[@Gnefitisis]

This is a salute to all those that knew the struggle of watching hard-subbed pixiliated 120p hentai on their 800x600 CRT.

[@bentaylor4170]

Kids these days have no idea how painful it was to send 1 song over infer red, having both phone sat next to each other for HOURS and if they got to far away you’d have to start all over again

[@idimidodjimi6760]

u apparently never experienced 300 baud modem, tape loading , or first streaming service in 80's where radio station aired program over the radio so you can record it on tape and then load it in to Your computer

[@phs125]

@@idimidodjimi6760 well, be thankful we have internet now...

[@phs125]

Things took off way too fast for me. In this case, listening to songs. In my early childhood, we listened to low quality songs in MW stations. Then came tape recorders. Which can play good quality audio no matter what time of day it was. Then came FM radio, good quality songs, but no need to buy tapes. Then polyphonic ringtones. Then music CDs, with over 200 illegal mp3s Then the memory cards. Just go to some internet cafe and copy some awesome music. And it's there in full 128kbps MP3. Then the wonder of bluetooth. You can copy MP3 WITHOUT removing your memory cards from phone. Then the legendary mp3skull.com that is, if you're willing to waste a precious 5MB of your monthly 1GB data on a song you may not even like. Then jio came and we just use Spotify or youtube or whatever. Just put something on man

[@idimidodjimi6760]

@Ankit Meher well u are lucky , that was the pain back then , but with every increment in speed we could achieve we were grateful. Let me give You a clue for 1 Mb of data over 300 baud modem in ideal conditions You could download in about 28 000 second, not that anyone did need transfer so much data back then . 28 000 seconds ~ more than 7 hours. So in modern day comparison it would be faster to send email with a 3 Mb picture with regular post than using 300 baud modem - and probably cheaper.

[@hewhohasnoidentity4377]

@@idimidodjimi6760 loading programs from a cassette tape into a TRS-80, connecting to freenet on a 1200 baud modem and getting 6 levels deep in a menu tree before realizing what you wanted was on a different branch. Even in the 90s placing orders with store vendors holding a device to the phone to let the computers communicate. Technology has come so far.

[@StarryNightGazing]

Narration feels like an endless stream of questions

[@havanaJbanana]

She sounds like a irritated teenager

[@sylviaisgod6947]

Especially every time she says the word "server" it sounds like a question....server?

[@--Paws--]

Most may not experience buffering anymore in KZbin but it was instead replaced by the mid-roll ads which does the same thing.

[@abbythings]

i experienced buffering until 2018ish

[@joel3399]

Yeah, they just won't let us enjoy

[@simplyincorrigible7708]

the ads would buffer as well.

[@--Paws--]

@@simplyincorrigible7708 That's the worst

[@nate6045]

"We'd like to think of the internet as a nebulous floating cloud above" It's clearly a series of tubes.

[@luddity]

Until Starlink

[@burtcocain1986]

It's not something you just dump something on like a big truck

[@Egilhelmson]

Actually, given that the current that makes the signal is located in the outer portion of the copper wire, and are confined by the outer surface of the fibers, a series of tubes is not a half bad analogy, even if it was made by a Republican.

[@noahdillon9908]

People in the 60s thinking we’ll focus on space travel and going to the moon Us instead focusing on how to get the best FPS on our KZbin videos

[@elbaecc]

You mean _Red_ , not _You_ Tube videos, right?

[@borgir6368]

well it is US who is thinking abt both.. most of the world was still dealing with poverty and aftermath of world wars

[@runarandersen878]

There is infact a link between this. Because after the moon landing or landings, the founding of NASA declined. This resulted in many very talented people quitting. Many of those began working with other computers and developed computers and computer systems. Those are the ground of what we have today.

[@tannhauserr]

Progress nonetheless.

[@elbaecc]

@@contradictorycrow4327 You are interpreting the OP's words too literally. I think what the OP means is that there was a time during the USSR/USA Space Race where things were going so fast in that field that people thought we would be a space-faring people at the turn of the century, and when the USSR failed in the 80s, the USA basically slashed NASA's funding and cut short our space faring ambitions....right about the time when 'computers' and 'internet' became a thing. So humanity went from looking out to space, to looking at their computer screens.

[@TaranVH]

Such blurry pixels. Cheddar has clearly never heard of nearest neighbor scaling.

[@Derpsii]

macro king all hail

[@Gooberpatrol66]

Bicubic gang

[@arfyness]

Get yer crispy aliasing right next door from your nearest neighbor!

[@tr1gger810]

heyyyy macro king is in the house

[@lespaceman]

Cheddar clearly knows little and talks like they know everything.

[@gfuterfas]

Watching this slow presentation feels like watching streaming video in the '90s. Thank god for 1.5x playback. :)

[@spencerfabricant4778]

6:50 Oh geez, am I going to be cited as pedantic for this one. "Numa Numa" was originally uploaded to Newgrounds, not youtube. It predated the other videos cited by at least a few years.

[@tompeled6193]

Yes you are pedantic because the video didn't misinform you.

[@jeriellopez4927]

Nothing said about that video being originally uploaded to KZbin. The video even started off talking about old ways we got video.

[@JoaoPedro-ki7ct]

Newgrounds?! Seriously?! Why?

[@klystron2010]

@@JoaoPedro-ki7ct Because it was originally uploaded in December 2004, the year before KZbin launched.

[@JoaoPedro-ki7ct]

@@klystron2010 What I meant was the content itself, it doesn't feel like it belongs to a a "flash games/animation site"

[@just1boot]

Codec stands for Compression Decompression? How have I never noticed that? Edit: It actually stands for "coder-decoder"

[@harrkev]

Wait until you find out what "Modem" stands for. It will blow your mind.

[@just1boot]

@@harrkev That's wrinkling my brain!

[@ashr]

Looked it up. According to Wikipedia it actually is a portmanteau of "coder-decoder", but same difference.

[@coolthefool1]

@@harrkev what does modem meant then

[@adrianaaa6755]

@@coolthefool1 modulator demodulator. Btw this is the same concept as codecs but applied in different scenario

[@kozmaz87]

8:45 WRONG! The thing you are describing is lossy compression not lossless. Information is lost there. It is just information that isn't important for humans that much. Why do people with no understanding of technology end up trying to explain it?

[@ytnewhandlesystem42]

Agreed. The misleading explanation that will cause people completely new to the concept to propagate their misunderstanding down the line. They are trying to sound smart, yet these inaccuracies makes you wonder how much you have to fact check it. Which is why all content has to be taken with a pinch of salt and cannot be blindly quoted.

[@DJ_Force]

Well, not exactly. Video compression utilizes both lossy and lossless compression. The idea of only recording the difference between frames is important, though the overall compression is still lossy.

[@leuri397]

No. If you not recording identical pixels between frames it's a lossless compression. If you restored video as it was 1 to 1 to original, there is no information loss

[@colinbrown7947]

@@leuri397 yes, but that is not how internet video works. Video and audio almost always use lossy compression, where information is removed that is not relevant to human perception.

[@leuri397]

@@colinbrown7947 yes, videos on the internet are using wide variety on lossy compression, such as motion vectors, reducing of chroma bitrate and descrete cosine convertion, but in that example in a video it is not a lossy compression

[@Arjay404]

3:18 lmao, I like that even a channel such as Cheddar is throwing shade at CoD and it's file sizes.

[@heydude4193]

For real. The hard drives are making them lazy. If shit like the Witcher can be on the switch, they can make their games smaller lmao

[@TheUnknownHarbingers]

Yes game sizes are ridiculous, but it also has to do with the average internet connections which can download it all relatively quick

[@thebigds]

This explanation of lossy vs lossless is totally incorrect. They say they describe lossless but really they're describing lossy compression. The thing that makes lossless lossless is that it doesn't modify the output AT ALL. Lossless compression is usually used for text, and a common example is ZIP. Multimedia compression is almost always lossy, including MPEG and XVID, because lossless compression isn't usually capable of making a meaningful reduction in bitrate for these kind of files. (There are exceptions, like FLAC)

[@nikolausluhrs]

Yeah, thats a big error i know with hevc when you do "lossless" quality it can end up bigger than the original file

[@fgsaramago]

Very true

[@therealsuperturbo785]

The only thing I don’t like about this video is the narrator’s inability to speak without the upward inflection at the end of every sentence.

[@gio5969]

Every sentence is a half-question, fer sure(?). And don't forget the skipping of consonants, e.g Ne'work.

[@JackVermicelli]

Not even just at the ends of sentences-- she inflects all her commas as question marks too; it's infuriating to listen to.

[@pin65371]

It sounds like she is telling one of her gfs some juicy drama.

[@3laws292]

Same.

[@senchaholic]

"At the time the best way to host a video was to use a server" what do you think CDN's are? A network of servers. And when you get to the CDN part of the video, you display the CDN as small "islands" serving a number of clients. The N in CDN stands for Network. To display a CDN in the video correctly, all those little "server islands" should've been connected, it's the whole point of a CDN to replicate data over a vast network of servers. I can't remember the last time I got so frustrated with a "technology video".

[@wutzerface77]

"on their huge, cathode ray tube computers" I love when people who don't know about technology/computers make videos about technology/computers

[@bentonrp]

Should be CRT monitors, right?

[@wutzerface77]

@@bentonrp Yeah, I guess i was being slightly pedantic but it’s just annoying

[@bentonrp]

@@wutzerface77 It's important. Cathode Ray Tube is not a type of "computer!" 😆

[@ProjSHiNKiROU]

This video is filled with nostalgic triggers

[@DrRandomStranger]

9:00 the problem with lossy: if you DO have a video with a lot of change in the whole fram, you notice the loss of quality.

[@altrag]

Not if its encoded well.. she mentioned VBR (variable bitrate) but didn't really talk about it. That's a bitrate change within the stream itself (as opposed to fully switching to a lower quality encode as in the adaptive bitrate). Any well-encoded video will simply have its bitrate higher for frames that involve a lot of movement and lower for frames that don't. Of course "well-encoded" is a pretty operative term there. Modern shows that are shot digitally in super high definition and coming from an official distributor (like say, watching a Netflix-produced show on Netflix's own service in 4K) will almost never show noticeable artifacts. But if you're hitting up some trash encode like a torrent rip or 'unofficial' KZbin upload, a lot of those are made using "just pick an output file size and hit go" mentality with little regard to the final quality. The encoding software does its best under those circumstances but being forced to limit themselves to a specific file size significantly limits the amount of bitrate variance they can apply to each frame (doesn't work too well if it uses all of its available file size on the first 80% of the show and then discovers a super-high-action scene right at the end and has no bits left to encode it with!) Good VBR encodes tend to have wildly differing file sizes depending on how much action the video had as a whole, which is (or at least wasn't a decade or so ago when I last cared) just not how the people who make trash encodes seem to operate.

[@Mercilessonion]

@@ericolens3 see the slomoguys's video where they test this with glitter.... The footage of glitter is garbage even at 4k... He said that his original file looks way better

[@denismurin]

Lossless compression and variable bitrate are very different thing from what you are describing. You were so close actually being educational but got lost in the woods(

[@DataUser1357421En]

Agree, the movement detection can apply to lossless as long as the encoded bits can be decoded exactly

[@niravmandhani2598]

Me: Watches this on LTE with high-speed buffering

[@anasmmtaji]

Video starts at 4:15

[@capnsteele3365]

nah

[@ryancraig2795]

Almost (?) all digital video at the consumer level is lossy compressed. If you're dealing with truly lossless video, you're probably doing professional content production, or distribution.

[@ryancraig2795]

Uncompressed video streams are huge. Check out HDMI or SDI - we're talking GB/s.

[@thebookwasbetter3650]

I remember a website back in 1998 where you could download movie trailers. I would click on four links, then go to work. When I got home I watched Great Expectations, Blade, Se7en, and The Avengers. (no not that Avengers.)

[@kutter_ttl6786]

@@ericolens3 No, not that Avengers.

[@TheUnknownHarbingers]

I remember apple's website had high quality trailers in 2000

[@martincerveny2284]

... and definitely better avengers! Sir August de Wynter :-D

[@anonUK]

Which Avengers?

[@martincerveny2284]

@@anonUK The Avengers (1998) movie, starring Sean Connery, Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, ... not that marvel trash.

[@churlissh_7680]

Narrator: “Or in simpler terms...” Me: He literally just said that 🤦‍♂️

[@thebasketballhistorian3291]

90's = waiting for a low resolution JPG to load line by line 2020's = streaming a cloud game at 120fps HD with near real time response to our controller inputs

[@mrmaximuser]

my Internetconnection: I don't think so.

[@irok1]

200 Kbps: yeah sure buddy

[@00dfm00]

Yet still complaining 🙄

[@edinfific2576]

"Lossy compression reduces the file size with an obvious reduction in quality" - I have to correct you here: The reduction in quality is rarely noticeable, it is only obvious when compressing too much to keep it unnoticeable. The file size/bandwidth reduction is often tenfold, sometimes more. The lossless compression keeps literally every original digital bit of an image/sound, compressing the same parts using math. Only small reductions in size are possible, usually to between 40% and 90% of the original file size, more when there are more same/similar parts in the file. Lossy is normally used for delivery, lossless for keeping originals for later editing and re-compression. An exception is music because it is many times less space-demanding than a losslessly compressed video, so it is doable with modern bandwidths and storage.

[@darrell20741]

I went off on so many tangent thoughts and memories, I learned a few things and I will watch this again. Thanks for making it.

[@noahfirstark]

Back in '98, I couldn't even stream a song, let alone a video

[@gavinathling]

Even a JPEG downloaded slowly over 56.6 kbps modems!

[@TheCrusaderRabbits]

This. Nobody watched videos in 95

[@TorreFernand]

@@TheCrusaderRabbits Yes we did, Microsoft made us watch this when we installed Windows 95 whether we wanted to or not! kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJCVnIF9nrKbi9U

[@TheUnknownHarbingers]

There wasnt much of it. But like they showed on the video Real Player. I watched Art Bell webcam. It was streaming.. mostly audio because you only got a new frame like every 10 or 15 seconds.

[@martincerveny2284]

Well, that's not true. We was streaming in 1997 (RealVideo) on 19.2k+ dial-up lines.

[@johannes914]

Your "lossless" compression explanation is in fact still lossy interframe compression...

[@tiagomaqz]

Ok, this is hands down THE BEST explanatory KZbin video I’ve watched this year. I’m truly impressed!!!!!!

[@theRealMrdodgy]

What is with the intonation of this presenter, it sounds like everything is a question.

[@alexandernordstrom1617]

I guess you could look up uptalk? Or high rising terminal? That's if you want to learn more about it? It's apparently a thing?

[@onceavamaravilla]

I had to stop watching. So annoying

[@daithimac5785]

..I personally believe ...that the Internet system of America ......uh...was unable to interweb...because some people of our nation don't have maps.....and...uh...that education...such as in South Africa and the Iraq and everywhere ..such as...like .......eh.....could benefit from the internets....

[@will1565]

Its horrific isn't it

[@korzynski]

Better than vocal fry

[@AlexanderPope_]

Imagine if all the smart people died and we had to reinvent the internet all-over again.

[@bernardli9514]

Thankfully the smart people write things down and publish standards for electronics and equipment so the information is not lost.

[@MartinThmpsn]

@@bernardli9514 ok, but what this book presupposes is... maybe they didn’t?

[@oldfag_adventures]

>books

[@alexandercastillo1404]

​@@ericolens3 As someone who can understand some of the 'digital codes' as you put it, you are spot on in your prediction that the internet will evolve to where the codes are not needed. Logic bound computing requires perfectly precise and specific instructions the codes are meant to supply, but modern computers are beginning to be able to develop their own instructions. This self sufficiency of machine learning and 'AI' lifts an immense burden in more complex tasks, but the more complex the task, the more difficult it is to understand why or even how the machine operated. Not too far in the future, machines will be able to create other machines independently of developers and very few people will return to working with 'digital codes'. The machines developed by machines will be far too complex to fully understand, but the value generated will be so immense the adoption of these technologies will happen swiftly. As you stated, the decision by engineers was to use a node/hub infrastructure to solve the problem of streaming video. An easily understandable and manageable tactic. Can you imagine what a 'well learned' computer might choose as a solution? Especially with the advantage of operating without requiring readability by humans, inevitable bugs introduced by developers, and with the collective insight of every machine before it. Soon no one will know how even the most crucial systems running the world truly work. Not even the smart people.

[@keiththoma2559]

Those not in the industry do not realize how large and how much of the web depends on Akamai. People talk a lot about AWS but its insane how much of the worlds traffic goes via Akamai

[@mushiat6530]

Or cloudflare.

[@DemiRonin]

This is a well made video! Thanks to whoever put the work into it!

[@TheGovind2]

I remember pausing the video till the whole video has loaded 😄

[@unixtreme]

I love how she puts it as if coming up with CDNs was a technical feat and not just the next logical step.

[@mikosoft]

Your description of lossless at 8:56 is actually a description of lossy compression.

[@fiddley]

The very first video I saw on the internet was the opening sequence from Friends. It took two whole nights to download on my 14.4k modem (couldn't download during the day cos my parents wanted to use the phone). It was about 2 cm square with mono telephone quality audio and about 10 frames/second. Now 8k 60fps with surround sound can be had at the click of a button. Stuff to watch is now so readily available that I have to set limits on my own time on KZbin otherwise I'd never get anything done. Incredible.

[@andrewvandenhoeven4273]

What a great quality video! Keep up this depth!!

[@TorreFernand]

Whoever did the graphics clearly has never seen a computer of the 90s I don't know why this annoys me

[@andrewlau0]

It's because we geeks lived through that era. Windows Explorer ("My Computer") was a file manager back in the Windows 95 era and had no media / web browsing capabilities. That functionality didn't arrive until IE 4.0 was integrated into Windows 98 and even then I don't remember it even supporting inline video!

[@kbluedye]

Windows icons, but aren't those Mac OS window decorations??

[@wheeliewheelie1]

I'm still amazed at the radio as an invention, and now this. Too quick, too quick. That Valley Girl accent though.

[@VibhorWase]

Ikr... annoying voice crack at the end of every sentence

[@JamieB-E92]

@@VibhorWase And just general condescending, can't be bothered, know-it-all tone. Makes it hard to not just tune her out lol

[@chrisklugh]

You brought back a lot of memories! Like when the internet was on a floppy disk and was a long distance phone call.

[@mavoromatthew]

Amazing video. Watching these videos always make me sound smarter.

[@JackVermicelli]

I hate now the narrator keeps inflecting questions? in the middles of sentences.

[@gemma4871]

Literally makes it unwatchable

[@scythal]

@@aushole No, Cheddar is based in New York. Try again

[@fornello123]

@@scythal California East

[@nikolausluhrs]

Im pretty dang sure they are using lossy compression for video distribution.

[@wochan7193]

thats amazing thanks for explaining this i learned so much

[@JordanMatyka]

A richer friend of mine had a dial up modem and I'd give him few coins to quickly download pages to later read offline. First step was to go to Internet Explorer settings and turn off images so only text would load. I still have a folder somewhere with prints of webpages from that time :)

[@keir92]

super convenient, but also why if you want 4k you may as well buy the blu-ray instead

[@metalvideos1961]

That's always the case. Physical copies are always better. Unless you get torrents. They are just as good. Even better then streaming.

[@JamJim]

06:49 RIP Headphones user

[@shoam2103]

It's not just CDNs tho, the video formats greatly improved too. It's possible to stream at < 0.2 mbps

[@asdsdjfasdjxajiosdqw8791]

One thing I wish you would have touched on (or maybe it's an idea for an upcoming video) is the issue with a device's hardware of actually playing the video, not just the connection. A big issue today is device manufacturers making pcs/phones/laptops that are only just about capable of playing back 1080p at 24 or 30 fps, but not 60fps. So when youtube switched over to 60fps recently, all of those people are now forced to watch new 60 fps videos at 720p if they don't want stuttering. Also new codecs that compress a file more but thus require more computing power to decode while playing also make it so that people whose device should be able to play 1080p get stuttery playback nonetheless (264 vs 265 compression).

[@Galactipod]

My singular contribution to society is being the third person to comment on this video.

[@TheHorseOutside]

Sorry bro, you're the 7th

[@Galactipod]

@@TheHorseOutside Sort by newest.

[@TheHorseOutside]

@@Galactipod I retract my previous statement and thank you for your contribution

[@PersonManManManMan]

I congratulate you for this immense contribution to humanity, keep up the good work

[@Galactipod]

@@PersonManManManMan I will be speaking before the United Nations General Assembly this evening to declare that I am Emperor of the World. They will surely accept.

[@themeanestkitten]

6:55 the good old days🥺 watching youtube without ads in the videos, playing (OG) star wars battlefront 2. I miss being a kid😭 i want to be ten again!

[@MrCyclist]

Get AdBlock

[@annyates8208]

This video is really helpful. Thank you.

[@rohitanand6309]

I really liked this video, got to know how things work, which we have taken granted. We don't even think for a moment that how smoothly the video plays on all devices in HIGH Quality in any part of the world without any problem.

[@mehdihassan8316]

Long gone were days when all you needed was Netflix. Streaming as now become like channels again, with every company starting their own platform

[@Hjernespreng]

Sure, but would you want all entertainment on a MONOPOLY?

[@moviemania1137]

Laughs in Pitate Bay

[@mehdihassan8316]

@@Hjernespreng Yeah, as long as it's cheap and not exploiting me

[@CorpusOrganic]

except we can pick and choose which channels we pay for. no more paying out all that money for stuff we are never going to watch. no more seeing my bill jump up $20 every single year

[@james42519]

all i pay for is hulu/disney+/espn+ because it is cheaper to get all 3 then just hulu and disney+. i hate sports. everything else is free. roku channel, peacock, plutotv, tubi, filmrise, amazon prime ias the imdb free tv. i have at&t tv i get free with phone service too. there are a lot of other free apps that have good stuff too. i have netflix too but family pays for that and let me use it. if you can't find stuff that you want to see free you are not trying hard enough.

[@DrRandomStranger]

5:41 why is there a roll of toiletpaper on his desk??

[@TheCrusaderRabbits]

Cheeto dust

[@PersonManManManMan]

He was ahead of time before the lock down

[@Hymer300]

Clean the monitor 😏

[@doctordothraki4378]

*2:29* I saw in a 1999 book called *Buildling the Ultimate Gaming PC* that different packets may take different routes to the same places

[@TeganBurns]

You're bringing back my 2005 middleschool headaches

[@ScottBrady06]

8:40 “Lossless reduces the file size without losing any quality” -that’s not necessarily the case lmaoooo

[@kc9scott]

Actually it’s always the case that lossless doesn’t affect the quality. The main big error in this video was claiming that lossy always has an obvious quality loss. That’s what’s incorrect. Lossy compression is a vital technology for internet video and audio. It is entirely possible to use it in a way that doesn’t cause any noticeable difference in quality.

[@zeektm1762]

@@kc9scott no noticeable loss doesnt mean there is no loss

[@johnschroeder3072]

@@zeektm1762 He wasn't arguing that fact

[@astrrra]

Thought it's going to be about h.264

[@Mtlbro6]

This is easily in my top 5 favorite KZbin channels.

[@wealthiness]

Amazon does CDN and uses the same logic for tangible products, by having products stocked in multiple locations they can provide faster shipping, many other websites are getting into the model too.

[@mfaizsyahmi]

Ah yes... I remember the best media player on Windows 95 called My Computer

[@RandomAussieGuy87]

Streaming video in Australia is still excruciating.

[@nixonhoover2]

Shitty, 3rd world country.

[@metalvideos1961]

Meanwhile in the Netherlands we have the best fiber optic network in the world. Which is capable of transferring 4Tb per second. Just got 1Gb fiber optic installed. It's amazing.

[@metalvideos1961]

@ಠ_ಠ I hate the weather in Australia. Way way too hot. Give me snow and cold weather. It just suck that the Netherlands suck at that. At least we had a pretty cold winter this year. But still it's pretty rare nowadays

[@johnschroeder3072]

@@metalvideos1961 More people in the world die because of the cold than the hot

[@metalvideos1961]

@@johnschroeder3072 your point makes no sense.

[@gwgux]

As a network and voice engineer that handles the both the network and phone system at work, I can say this is a really good high level overview of how streaming is possible on the Internet. Good job Cheddar!

[@TMFKSOFT]

A missed fact is also the Netflix Open Connect programme, where internet providers can run Netflix servers in their own data-centres to help get users even faster and closer connections to content, in some cases these data-centres could be only a few miles away.

[@lukasmurmann625]

Disney plus and HBO still buffers and drops out on my 2019 samsung qled with fiber internet... Unacceptable, but there seems to be done nothing to actually make simple stuff like this stable once and for all

[@donrico8212]

Sounds like a modem issue or your providers gigs per second

[@borp0164]

I have 1mbps satellite internet and it rarely buffers, sure it's at 480p but on my phone really it's not noticable

[@emaheiwa8174]

IMO Philip Taylor Kramer created it, they killed him and stole his work

[@xxboxx6164]

Yeah I remember reading about his death and it could be true

[@RudieObias]

Back in the day (2000/2001), it took me days to download BATTLE ROYALE over dial-up-years before it was released in the US. The video file was separated into two with no sound. I had to download the two parts during two different sessions. I still watched it and loved it!

[@metalvideos1961]

I just re downloaded that movie again yesterday. Average download Speed was 80MBps max speed was 103MBps. I love how times have changed. File size was over 40GB. There is also a part 2. Have not seen that one yet.

[@blackfireq]

I think interlace video should be a footnote. It gave way to the ability to watch video as it loads. Before that you needed to wait until the whole file loaded. This was due to the index being store at the end of the file. Interlace changed all that

[@aegisofhonor]

why are you showing these old antiquated computers from the 1980s that would have been long obsolete by the time the issues of video streaming would have been tackled. Show late 90s computers like a Think Pad, iMac, G3 Mac, those computers that would have been "current" from the time these issues came around; not some old SE from 1987. Also you skipped 7 years, you went from 1998 to 2005, what happened between then, what existed BEFORE KZbin? We didn't just go instantly from 1998 to 2005.

[@TorreFernand]

Because the graphics team clearly never saw a 90s computer

[@kz03jd]

What I learned: CODEC stands for Compression & Decompression Edit: Thanks to Kevin Scott, I now know it ACTUALLY stands for Coder/Decoder! Stupid video lies to us 🖕

[@kc9scott]

I hope the video didn’t say that (I’m not going to rewatch to check). It really stands for Coder/Decoder.

[@kc9scott]

I lied... rewatched it, and uggh, yeah, they did say that. Another error. Normally I like Cheddar’s videos. In this one they got the big picture right, but messed up on some of the details.

[@kz03jd]

@@kc9scott Well damm... I was actually being serious with my comment haha Appreciate you correcting that though. 👍 Now I know what it ACTUALLY stands for!

[@Reavenk]

Ooh, nostalgia! I forgot about Real Player! I suppressed that memory along with the crippling thought of how old I am,... oh no...

[@Friek555]

None of the major streaming services use lossless compression. They use lossy compression algorithms which are much more effective at reducing file size, but trade that for a small loss in image quality. Cheddar, you guys are professional video producers! You should know this!

[@teethgrinder83]

Ahem, that would be Sir Tim Berners Lee lol like I care 😂

[@XOPOIIIO]

20 years from now people will think the same of today's technology.

[@emi.mp4]

buffering wasn't the only problem with early youtube - my outdated CPU choked on even 480p video! dedicated video cards weren't what they are now, and SERIOUS gamers used still used soundcards to save every last mhz. so grateful for how far things have come!

[@KatzenwagenTV]

ah, those early years. back in 1999, it would take me 5-10 minutes to download a wallpaper, and downloading a 30MB installer took me 1 and a half days via an ISP that only provided max 28.8kbps service. now, 1GB can be downloaded in just 1 minute. amazing evolution of tech.

[@mehdihassan8316]

Without wifi, streaming is trash

[@bridiekearney5359]

Investing right now should be at the top of everyone's list. In 5years you will be ecstatic with the decision you made today!

[@Styxhexenhammer-wm8nf]

Absolutely right

[@nathanmarkel1203]

I got 70% of my portfolio in crypto and I have been making good money

[@jimmymartins1564]

I trade with Mr Steven also I thought people don't know him

[@aereree9561]

Most people don't know that Bitcoin trading is more different from saving your coin in your wallet 😂😂🤣🤣

[@larrysinger9532]

What's really the idea behind this Bitcoin trading investment anyways, because all I do is buy when it falls and sell it off when it goes high

[@theblubus]

I'm impressed. You guys did a good job explaining: Bandwidth, throughput, compression algorithms, CDNs, what the Internet actually is to the masses in a clear way non-network engineers can comprehend. I'm going to test some of our users and send this to them the next time they complain about the company VPN being slow...(even though its really their sucky home wifi [eyeroll])

[@VitoxCzechia]

This is great video! Totally great! :) Thanks for it! :)

[@nelsonpun]

I remember I thought it was ridiculous when Netflix said they wanted to deliver HD streaming online. I imagined a really bad user experience. Years later I sat in the audience at the HPA awards while they accepted an award for technological advancement.

[@carlchapman4053]

My first dial up speed was 28Kbs/Sec which was"God! This is amazing, I could load my Spectrum games in two seconds!!!!! OMG!!!"

[@sosasees]

I remember that in 2008 I could barely watch KZbin in an acceptable quality. Now I am really grateful that I can watch every frame in Full HD without buffering, even if most of the time I choose 360p or 480p.

[@faustin289]

Actually, choosing anything bigger than 480p on my $100 Chinese phone would be a lost cause.

[@sosasees]

@Curly Same with anything higher than 1080p on any of my devices. KZbin doesn't always limit the video resolutions based on my screen resolution, so I can sometimes choose 1440p and beyond despite their improvements being literally invisible on my 1080p screens.

[@josephmyers5057]

Kids today will never know the feeling of seeing your song finally finish downloading after 2 days on FrostWire.