Too Late or Too Latent?

You’ve done all your research, analyzed the match-ups and laid out your perfect lineup. Your fantasy team roster is looking great! No frenzied, last-minute shuffling of players for you. All that remains is to sit back, grab a beverage of choice and watch your games as the roster deadline ticks down.

Then you see it. Scrolling across the bottom of your screen, a breaking news update alerts you that your star player has been injured in a freak accident. Instead of scoring you points the athlete will be sitting on the bench. Your rock-solid strategy has been broken wide open.

So much for a leisurely day of watching sports.

You grab wildly at the first device you see. All but breaking your fingers, you click and tap as precious milliseconds drip away with each page load. Hurry up!

4 seconds to lockdown… Almost there.

3… So close.

2… C’mon!

1… If you could just-

0

Too late, or should we say, too latent?

You see, the “live” stream you were watching, wasn’t all that live.

As often happens, there was a delay between when the broadcast signal was sent and when it was received. Thus, upon seeing the information late, you were denied the opportunity to act upon it.

Your opponent, however, was at the game so they knew to make the proper adjustments. No problem for them, but a big problem for you.

When live-streaming, every moment counts. Any kind of delay risks missing something important or a chance for someone to drop spoilers. Of course, the importance of low latency reaches much further than sports. Making bids at an auction, conducting an interview, playing video games, even just having a chat, all these things are negatively affected by high latency.

Many have touted a “super low latency” of two seconds. At first, that may sound like a small number but if you really think about it, it’s quite a bit of time.

Forget missing a pass, if you had to wait two seconds to respond to everything the other person said from “Hi” to “I love you”, that might cause you some problems.

Real-time shouldn’t be faster than live-time.

That’s why we developed Red5 Pro. Our under .5 second latency is, by our calculations, the closest to a scalable, real-time streaming currently available. That will ensure that your broadcasters and subscribers are seeing the same thing at nearly the same exact moment to allow for the best UX you and your client can achieve.

So give it a try and if you need more information schedule a call.