NanoTech Entertainment Inc (NTEK)

[DangFool]

I'm saying that there's a charitable read on Akamai's slide, and in fact I have no particular reason to doubt them.

Well, first of all, the slide clearly states that the 9.5 video used AVC and AVC was progressively downloaded, so are you stating that the slide is false?

I think they're listing options. Progressive download is one of those options. They're saying that they've got you covered whether you have a fast connection or not.

As for your question, you're completely correct, that buffering would allow you to buffer complex sections while showing easier ones. It'd work the same way as a YouTube video over a lousy connection. If you're lucky, you never run out of data and require more buffering while the image is paused. It's a very tricky thing to guarantee that the stream will never lag behind, because there are too many unknowables in the way. Maybe your kid upstairs is downloading porn at the same time, diminishing the bandwidth available to your 4K feed, maybe the guy across the street is Bittorrenting an entire season of The Wire, and that sucks down too much of the local pipe.

But these scenarios have virtually nothing to do with NTEK, because it has no storage medium for progressive download. They bet the farm on doing direct streaming, and I do believe it's cost them, because the network can't handle the bitrates they require. Someone who loves them more than I do could say they're too visionary, that the world has to work to keep up with their incredible brains. Whatever story helps you sleep at night, I say.

Now, Akamai might consider having local storage and buffering it there. Say, a big hunk of disks down the block that's running straight off the fiber. They've tried to do similar things with interactive television, and it's a big, expensive, complex thing. Much better if everybody just has a really fast pipe in the first place.