No one doubts the benefits and practicality of the internet, but the means of connection has its disadvantages when it comes to live transmission. the games of world Cup are an example of how open TV is still important: due to the delay, your neighbor can celebrate a goal for Brazil before you — in some cases, the delay can exceed the mark of one minute.
I wanted to watch the World Cup online, but it didn’t work
Just think: you have your brand new television, and the opportunity to watch the World Cup games in 4K resolution arises. Great, isn’t it? Well, I even tried, but soon I went back to the traditional HD.
I am user of Claro TV+Box, pay-TV service via Internet (IPTV). The decoder is compatible with 4K resolution, and the operator has loaded two SportTV channels with the highest resolution in its grid. The picture was great, the sound too and the streaming consumed about 50 Mb/s of my bandwidth. Great, isn’t it?
In my experience in the match between Brazil and Croatia, streaming in 4K by Claro TV+ Box presented delay of about one minute and ten seconds🇧🇷 There was no point in getting excited about the finals: if I didn’t hear cheers, it’s because there was no goal.
And let’s go back to the HD broadcast.
It wasn’t even a minute into the game and I already switched to Globo. It’s people, 4K hasn’t come yet lol
— Lucas Braga (@LucasBraga) November 24, 2022
The challenge of following live events over the internet
After the frustration with broadcasting in 4K, I had no choice but to abandon SporTV 4K and switch to Globo. I continued watching via the internet through Claro Box TV+, as I still didn’t have an open TV antenna connected to my television.
The delay dropped, but it was still insufficient: I still had a delay of about 45 seconds compared to my neighbors. That is, I continued taking spoilers from everything.
If you are in a more isolated location, such as a farm or farm, the delay of streaming transmissions will not disturb you so much because you cannot be spoiled by your neighbors. But in the city… it’s practically impossible.
If the internet is your only option to watch the World Cup, it might be interesting to use a headset with noise cancellation.
Delay on different platforms
In the game between Brazil and Croatia, our executive editor Paulo Higa made the following comparison between different online platforms, considering Globo’s digital terrestrial signal from São Paulo:
- twitch: 8 seconds
- YouTube: 26 seconds
- FIFA Plus: 1 minute and 10 seconds
The Streaming Problem: Encoding
Your internet speed is unlikely to be the main culprit for delay in live streams. I talked about the subject with Helder Ferrão, marketing and industries manager at Akamai, a company that provides content distribution services (CDN) in 135 countries.
Ferrão also explains that the delay is not necessarily caused by internet speed or latency, and the main culprit of delays is the image processing for online transmission🇧🇷 The step is called transcodingwhich converts the TV signal to a format compatible with streaming:
“We will always use a broadcast on free-to-air TV as a reference. On open TV, which transmits sound and image through radio frequencies, with repeaters and a certain level of performance.
The other transmissions need to capture this image and pass it through a encoder, which will transform the content to another format for streaming online. Just by going through encodera delay is inserted due to the processing time.”
Helder Ferrão, marketing and industries manager at Akamai
There are also reasons why the delay is longer in 4K streams:
“A 4K broadcast requires a lot more bandwidth and coding, so you have a lot more delay.”
Helder Ferrão, marketing and industries manager at Akamai
Despite encoding being the main culprit for delays, Ferrão explains that the infrastructure of a CDN and optimized networks can help the experience of watching live events over the internet. He mentions that Akamai has servers in almost 180 Brazilian operators.
Claro made some optimizations in its IP transmissions to avoid the delay. To telesynthesis, the operator stated that Claro TV+ would have a delay of a maximum of 10 seconds, but only if the customer used the telephony’s own broadband; in connections from other operators, which is my case, the delay can be up to 40 seconds.
The best thing to do: watch it on free-to-air TV
Every live stream needs to go through the encoding process, which is the biggest culprit behind delay. Therefore, the best way to avoid being spoiled by your neighbor is watch games on free tv🇧🇷 Globo’s digital signal, the broadcaster that acquired FIFA’s broadcasting rights, is available in most Brazilian cities.
Any television sold in Brazil manufactured after 2010 already has an integrated converter, and if you have an older model it is possible to purchase a receiver for less than R$100. a simple bread wire or paper clip is enough to get it tuned🇧🇷
https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2022/12/05/quer-assistir-a-copa-via-streaming-sinto-muito-mas-o-delay-sera-um-estraga-prazeres/