Antique Memes Roadshow @lemmy.world The Picard Maneuver @startrek.website 1 yr. ago

Found this dusty antique from the days when video players would let you buffer. If only this were still a thing.

Why did this change? Was it a greed thing?

31 comments

HTML5 made video a first class citizen of your browser and buffering is handled automatically now 🙂

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Audio_and_video_delivery/buffering_seeking_time_ranges
- Oh! I just assumed they were trying to save $ on all those looong "___ 10 hr version" videos or something.
  
  It's both. Buffering the whole video was a waste of bandwidth and the changes for HTML5 means they could get away with lowering the buffering limit without destroying everyone's viewing experience.
For longer videos, a lot of people will stop watching before the video ends. A lot of bandwidth is wasted by buffering the entire video when the user is only going to watch 50% of it. To save bandwidth, sites like YouTube only buffer a tiny bit at a time.
- I'm guilty of this. I'll queue up long music mix or ambient videos and just leave them going.
  
  I meant something like opening a two hour long podcast and only listening to 30-60 minutes before closing the tab or switching to a different video. With the old functionality and current internet speeds, it likely would have buffered the entire video in only a few minutes. It could have wasted multiple GB of bandwidth.
  
  I'll open dozens of 15-45min videos, watch a few to completion, close the rest after watching a tiny bit or nothing at all.
- IIRC YouTube breaks the videos up into chunks to achieve that
YouTube still buffers video?
- What he means is that, in olden days, videos would just keep buffering until the whole video was loaded. Now it's only at most the next ~1min, no more. You were able to see the grey bar thingie go all the way to the end.
  
  i think its cus a 4k 60hz video would brick anyones ram
- It does not, no
  
  It very, very obviously and observably does, though.
If you think that was bad, you never tried to download porn on a BBS with a 2400 baud modem.
I am sure there are a few plugins you can use to make it work again.
The only difference is that the buffer indicator isn't visible anymore...

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