How Viaplay’s broadcasts work

A football match, movie or an episode of a TV-series has to go through a few steps before the stream can be watched on your device. Curious? See below.

In order for you as a customer to always be able to watch our streams in good quality, the content is transmitted with what we call the “Adaptive Bit Rate”-technology. This means that the video quality and screen resolution are adapted to your internet speed and the capacity of the device being used. In other words – if you have a stable and consistent internet connection, you will have a stable and consistent viewing experience. However, if your connection varies, the streams may also vary in quality and you may experience that the video is buffering.

When a person chooses something from our content, it automatically sends out a request to get access to it through your network. The request is then intercepted by a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which later collects and transmits the necessary information about your device and internet speed to the content distributor.

Thus, CDN is a system of broadcast servers that delivers content to users based on various variables. The system automatically selects the CDN that is technically closest to the receiver – not necessarily geographically closest. Should the server become overloaded, the user will automatically be connected to another server – the same applies if a server should crash. Thus, with this system, Viaplay cannot be overloaded.