On 12/17/18 5:13 PM, Rick Stevens wrote:
Most streaming platforms now use quasi-HTTP connections to packetize the stream content (HLS, HDS, MPEG-Dash, et al.). As clients connect, they're given a "playlist" of these packets. Depending on the server and how it's set up, the server may have "n" "current" chunks, passes "n-1" chunks in a playlist, and expect the player to request another playlist when the last chunk starts playing. The gotcha here is that each client will get a slightly different playlist. Synchronization between multiple clients is almost impossible in this scenario if the current chunk list is more than one. One can try to mitigate it by making the current chunklist and the playlist exactly the same length, but that's not always possible.
What is needed in this case is an external synchronization to tell the players where they should be in the stream. However, in almost all internet streaming applications synchronization is irrelevant.
Older technologies such as Icy (Shoutcast/Icecast) and RTSP (the old RealNetworks protocol) do support client synchronization (sorta), but due to the inherent latencies in decoding the data, absolute synchronization is also difficult (you'll hear the differences). As long as the data is packetized, seamless synchronizing among multiple clients is almost impossible IMHO. There's almost always a lag of some sort. It's not like broadcast radio or TV. Even digitized TV signals will display differently on different TVs in the same room due to signal reflections, hardware differences in the decoders, software, etc.
LMS has very tight synchronization. I have a client playing on the stereo and one on my laptop. If I stand between the rooms, there is no perceptible difference in the timing. It uses its own protocol and I assume there is some timing information involved. Remember that the original question was for an internal LAN, not over the internet.
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