Netflix, Comcast, and Apple TV

Dan Rayburn, in a Comcast/Netflix piece for Streaming Media Blog:

In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn’t having quality problems. The reason for this is that Netflix is using Level 3 and Limelight to stream their content specifically to the Apple TV device. What this shows is that Netflix is the one that decides and controls how they get their content to each device and whether they do it via their own servers or a third party. Netflix decides which third party CDNs to use and when Netflix uses their own CDN, they decide whom to buy transit from, with what capacity, in what locations and how many connections they buy, from the transit provider. Netflix is the one in control of this, not Comcast or any ISP.

Interesting; I live in Kabletown and watch almost all my Netflix via Apple TV, so this explains why I never encountered a problem.

★ Thursday, 27 February 2014