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Play During Downloads

TrackZ

TrackZ

Well-known member
I wish K would take inspiration from other platforms doing large downloads, like the game systems.

On Xbox, when I start a large game download, it prioritizes bits I would need to start up the game and get playing ASAP. It allows you to actually start the game and interact without waiting for the entire package.

With today's download tech, I think it's overkill for K to have to download the entire movie contents before playback can begin at all. Note that I'm NOT asking for streaming.

K should be able to download for ~5 minutes to queue up from the start of a movie, then be able to begin and sustain playback while the remainder downloads in the background.

Of course, it would have to calculate available bandwidth and make an intelligent estimate when playback should begin to help ensure no interruptions.

This feature would really enhance the usability of the system for me.
 
That would be a much appreciated feature. Amazon used to do this as well (when downloading movies on TiVo). Might not be possible on a Strato-only system since downloads slow when playing a movie. But if there is a Terra in the system, it would be nice to allow starting a movie if the time to complete the movie is twice the projected remaining download time (to provide some margin).
 
I think the download rates on the Strato itself are arbitrarily slow. Single hard drives can read/write up to 100+ MB/s. That's 800+ Mbps. To only be able to download at ~150 Mbps offline and abysmally slow online has to be a software limitation.

Perhaps the CPU of the unit just can't handle playback/UI rendering and download at the same time, but it shouldn't be a I/O issue. Maybe they do some heavy processes and/or decryption of the bits being downloaded which uses the horsepower.

But being able to pick a movie from our library and have it playing within 5 - 10 minutes would be a paradigm shift in usability of the system in my household and would foster more use and likelihood to buy content in the long run. I don't expect to be buying any Terra servers for my home soon, if at all all, especially with new pricing.
 
Agreed, I also don't have any plans to buy a Terra server anytime soon, and being able to start the movie playback a few minutes after initiating the download, assuming the network conditions result in the download being expected to be completed before the movie would otherwise be over, would be a game changing feature. Would absolutely get me to buy much more content from the Kaleidescape Store.
 
I would think this is something K is working on. You can choose a collection of movies and have them all listed in your movies navigator with a portion of the movie already downloaded so you can start the movie and then it completes the download. The entire time you are playing the movie from the hard drive.

Maybe in the future, there will be dedicated storage on your server just for these collections.



TrackZ said:
I wish K would take inspiration from other platforms doing large downloads, like the game systems.

On Xbox, when I start a large game download, it prioritizes bits I would need to start up the game and get playing ASAP. It allows you to actually start the game and interact without waiting for the entire package.

With today's download tech, I think it's overkill for K to have to download the entire movie contents before playback can begin at all. Note that I'm NOT asking for streaming.

K should be able to download for ~5 minutes to queue up from the start of a movie, then be able to begin and sustain playback while the remainder downloads in the background.

Of course, it would have to calculate available bandwidth and make an intelligent estimate when playback should begin to help ensure no interruptions.

This feature would really enhance the usability of the system for me.
Click to expand...
 
carajo said:
You can choose a collection of movies and have them all listed in your movies navigator with a portion of the movie already downloaded so you can start the movie and then it completes the download. The entire time you are playing the movie from the hard drive.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with this. Can someone explain it in more detail?

It sounds like what you are saying is if I add a movie to a Collection, it gives me the ability to play it "on the fly" without having it formally downloaded or having to wait the full time for it to download if I start playback?

If so, that's amazing. Is there some limit to this?
 
TrackZ said:
I'm not familiar with this. Can someone explain it in more detail?

It sounds like what you are saying is if I add a movie to a Collection, it gives me the ability to play it "on the fly" without having it formally downloaded or having to wait the full time for it to download if I start playback?

If so, that's amazing. Is there some limit to this?
Click to expand...

I don’t think it’s so much being able to play “on the fly” like say with Vudu, Netflix, or similar; but similar.

A lot of this depends on how the files for the movies are stored.

But if for example it’s similar to a Blu-Ray the movie is actually in multiple parts which is seamless to the viewer. If so then it shouldn’t be too difficult to re code the system to allow playback of the first part once its download, and the system continues to download the other parts while you watch the first part from the hard drive. Once viewing of the first part is finished the system should be downloading the third (or later) part while the system switches seamlessly to the second part.

This is similar but not the same as how other stream on the file systems (with less compression and lower quality then K work) by using “packets” of data.

This all depends on how K manages the movie files, what legally the studios allow K to do, if watching while downloading causes security issues, are there cpu processor overhead issues of playing back while downloading at the same time.

One simple reason I would think this might no be offered is K is all about a quality experience. Watching while downloading eventually leads to “buffering” issues and interruption in playback. Doesn’t matter how fast your connection is eventually it will happen. I would think K doesn’t want there expensive up market product to be associated with playback interruptions that do exist (regardless of how often) with lower end options like Vudu on a Roku. For K owners who largely have money to spare and need instant playback to buy the Terra boxes.

That said personally if there was no technical or legal issue with packet or nearly instant watching I would love it as I don’t often know what I want to watch and it changes on a whim. I can’t wait 1-2 hours when I want to see it now. And while I would buy a Terra for certain movies there is no way I will buy enough Terras for the thousands of movies I currently own, and which grows by about 200 a year.
 
carajo said:
I would think this is something K is working on. You can choose a collection of movies and have them all listed in your movies navigator with a portion of the movie already downloaded so you can start the movie and then it completes the download. The entire time you are playing the movie from the hard drive.

Maybe in the future, there will be dedicated storage on your server just for these collections.
Click to expand...

This is an interesting nuance of having a limited number of “partiality pre-downloaded titles” that would be ready to watch immediately while also saving space for those who have a limited amount.

I assume it would be harder to implement but interesting to think about.

John
 
Ha, I’m a moron. I read Carajo’s suggestion as something we have today using collections on the device, hence my prior reply. I didn’t realize he was designing an idea of how preloading could work.
 
Yesterday, I noticed full speed downloading with playback paused but unit and image on, on the strato-s12 for the first time in 3.5 years. Curious.
 
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