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Comment by pedrocr | Hacker News Reader

How low is ultra-low-latency that it's relevant for sports? Does anyone really care if their broadcast is 30 seconds delayed from live?

I subscribe to both Formula 1 and MotoGP online streaming services and couldn't care less if the broadcasts were even multiple minutes delayed. They may very well be already and I wouldn't know. As far as I can tell they both just use standard CDNs delivering DASH or similar (basically just short video files played in sequence).

That seems more than enough for sports. Multiple minutes may result in getting real time information from elsewhere (e.g., Twitter, local radio) but anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds seems fine.

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I work for a video streaming company (primarily sports). There is a huge problem with latency in sports.

We call it the "Twitter effect". Essentially people either see things on social media or app notifications before it happens. Kinda ruins it for some people.

We are working on sub-30 second latency in 4K w/ server side ad insertion, but it's hard work. Especially with encoding with DRM baked in.

I had a normal latency stream (about 1.5 seconds) of the world cup on one England game. I saw the goal going in about 5-10 seconds before the cheers from the neighbours watching on DTT.

For the FA Cup final I had two feeds, one the 4K BBC version, and one on SDI from Wembley. The goal went in, and I'd completely forgotten it by the time the 4K goal went in.

The trouble is, things like twitter, whatsapp etc, will work to the lowest latency, and for a football game that's about 50-600 nanoseconds to the earliest viewer. Twitter can push the message within a few seconds (or the VAR result or whatever)

Latency needs to be in the sub-10 second goal-glass range.

Surely, in that case what would be important is relative-latency, not absolute.

If you delay all your friends by 30s +-2s then that would probably be fine...

That changes the problem somewhat.

good luck having a conversation with them with that type of latency

At the top of this thread I was wondering "how many miliseconds is low latency", I hadn't realised it was usually worse than 30 seconds!

Thanks! Do you know what the equivalent latency number is for cable TV? The Twitter effect only applies for the difference between the two numbers.

Broadcast TV latency is usually in the 4-10 second range, with typical latency being around 6s. Not sure how it breaks down between cable vs satellite vs over-the-air.

I'm actually not sure. I'm sure it's different for every station and mode of delivery. Our latency is measured directly from the broadcaster signal.

Fubo? Liked the service during trial but the 4K World Cup stream was flaky.

If your friends are watching the same events in other places; you basically need your video to be less delayed than your friends' viewing plus the latency of them texting you (friend observes something, types something, sends, then whatever network and push delay on the way to you).

If you're not watching with someone else, it doesn't make that much difference; but 30 seconds is plenty for someone to cheer for a goal and the notification to distract you from seeing it.

That's already an issue with radio vs TV which is where I'm getting the ~10 to 30 second value. Normal cable TV already has a bunch of delay and someone listening on the radio is often 15+ seconds ahead of you. This can be disruptive. If that person is at a bar or other gathering they will disrupt the viewing because they will cheer (or not cheer) well ahead of the event so the suspense is gone. I've seen this happen.

So given that what you are competing against (cable TV) already has a significant delay I doubt a normal web stream can't reach the same or better latency with just standard HTTP download of video files.

Yes. 30 seconds is too much.

In Santiago, during national soccer matches everyone would watch, goals would reach us through the sound of neighbors rejoicing sooner than they would from actual television coverage because the satellite dish had a latency of say 3 seconds over cable.

You're giving an example that validates my point. Existing technologies already have widely variable delays (radio vs broadcast TV vs cable TV vs sattelite TV) and yet they're all in wide use. And you can't compare directly the 30s I suggested (end-to-end latency) with the 3 seconds of latency differential between technologies. It's probably less than that but it's possible your neighbors are in a 30s delay and you are in a 33s delay.

And if the problem was actually that serious it would be easier to fix it by just adding additional delay to the faster technologies instead of having to reduce latency in internet streaming at huge cost.

Then you would have the people at stadium tweeting about the results and ruining the experience for the rest. We can and we should strive to get the best possible result if it is feasible.

Just experienced this delay being an issue for the 3rd period of this vegas-san jose playoff game. When goals pop off as fast as they do and it completely changes the game, that delay matters. Especially when my friends are either at a bar or streaming the game, it's hard to communicate and share the moment without spoiling. I basically have to keep a mental tab on who's stream is delayed and when I can get excited with who.

Ultra-low-latency is absolutely vital in sports betting industry where the odds are constantly changing based on what actions are taking place in real time.

Results in sports can switch from one side to the other end within split second, so whoever has the lowest latency will gain massive advantages. It's very similar to stock trading.

Yes, absolutely. Huge deal for live sports.

It’s the entire reason that I won’t cut the cord.

The chord you're not cutting already has a large delay from live. If you're in the US even larger because besides the delay from the technology there's also intentional broadcast delay for censorship reasons.

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