A question from a true amateur.

Scenario: Looking at video-contributions from major German TV- Mediatheque under "missed Broadcasts" (ZDF).

Within the same day frame, some videos come in flawlessly, others are constantly interrupted by "filling Buffer", to a point where nobody would want to continue watching this particular video.

How is such a thing possible ?

Thx & cheers.

It's possible that the quickly streamed/delivered videos are 'cached copies' on under-utilized distribution servers -- and the constantly buffered videos are not available in recent-cache so have to be fetched from the Original Source Server and all the intermediate component are congested/over-subscribed.

Youtube has a similar issues. Some videos will play quick as can be, while others will buffer, or just plain fail to stream. It really depends on how often that video gets requested of whether it's still in cache somewhere.

If the website you're visiting is International, they will very often deploy 'edge servers' around the world with recent-versions of their contents in cache for distribution. Edge Servers can't hold 'everything' but do hold most recent and popular cached copies.

Is my guess answer too technical or full of bullshit? Sorry, ...sometimes the magic just doesn't work.

I've noticed this problem on youtube sometimes whenever I try to play a video that has few views...been on youtube for a good while...hasn't be popular. Guess youtube stores such videos away on servers hidden in the youtube headquarters basement under piles of boxes filed with old 20MB 5.25" hard drives.