Stage 15 at Amazon MGM Studios in Culver City , California . Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

Live sports are more important than ever . And not just for the usual defendant like ESPN and the legacy networks . The cellular inclusion of streaming services has led to increase fragmentation for some leagues , more headaches for those just try on to watch a secret plan — and even higher stakes for the fellowship that have every orb on them once the proverbial ( and actual ) clock starts ticking .

Amazon Prime Video is preparing for its third season as the single abode ofThursday Night Football(the first biz is Buffalo - Miami on September 12 ) after having previously streamed games as part of a partnership with NFL web and Fox . Thefirst year was a little bumpyat the showtime , with some streamersstruggling with low-spirited bitrates . Amazon stresses that any hiccough were contained to a fraction of viewers , and any problems were relatively short - live . And while hiccups do occasionally happen to all streaming services , the 2nd year of exclusivity was much more fluent .

All of that was on my thinker as I sat down with Amazon Prime Video’sBA Winston , VP of engineering for the service , on June 21 at Amazon ’s International Media Tour for Amazon Web Services at Amazon MGM Studios in Culver City , California . ( We were there on Amazon ’s dime . ) Winston is basically in armorial bearing of anything and everything that gets the video feed itself , from the tv camera onto whatever twist you ’re using — or “ glass to glass , ” as he called it .

That ’s no small feat for on - requirement , and it ’s much harder for live events . And when Prime Video fight in that opening time of year ofThursday Night Football , it was inconceivable for terminal users to live from where , incisively , the problem stem . Not that it mattered — we just wanted to watch football .

“ As you rightly said , ” Winston note in opening , “ it ’s a very complex and very disconnected and distributed ecosystem . But from our perspective , we want to see our customers get a good experience no matter where the problem might be . So that ’s why we ghost over every part of our pipeline . ”

A complex pipeline

We hear a lot about grapevine in the afternoon ’s briefings with various Amazon VPs . There are densification line . There are contagion and legal transfer pipelines . And a big part of that latter bit are the cyberspace service providers — the ISPs that we all pay to get connectivity at nursing home and on the go . Amazon ( and the other companies that service up huge amount of data command for picture ) does n’t just fire up a live NFL broadcast , or a unexampled time of year ofThe Boys , and hope that the various ISPs of the world can plow it .

Winston mention that there are a couple thousand ISPs in the U.S. alone , from the names you know to much humble trafficker you ’ve never heard of .

“ We evidently do n’t check everything , ” Winston said . “ And sometimes when content is flow through during meridian fourth dimension , when we have such high volume , there could be last - nautical mile issues that either customers face , just connectivity to their ISP , or it could be in the region , or could be a certain region within an ISP . So that ’s an reiterative process . But our focus is to assure that we are still scaled up and deliver a just experience . ”

Amazon might not have control once the data leave its hands — and let ’s not understate the reach of AWS ’ hands — but it ’s not like it ca n’t work with the ISPs . That ’s a cardinal part of the process .

“ We can influence , and we can optimise two matter , ” Winston said . “ One : We forecast and endeavor to figure out for those in football on a Thursday eve , how much bandwidth using up is probably needed in Philadelphia , for Xfinity client . And we do this across the country .

“ And then the 2d matter is how we connected . We plain mold with cognitive content pitch internet . And we need to ensure that we are link up the right places where they have enough pipe going into the meshwork . So we can control that because we do some of the routing . ”

Lowest latency in the West

There ’s also the issue of latency . That is , the amount of time between , say , a touchdown actually happening on the field , and when you see it on your screen . Less is always secure , of course of study , especially in the eld of societal media and get-up-and-go notifications . Nobody wants to realize that the live event they ’re check is n’t quite live , in a real - metre sense . Like everything else when it comes to streaming television , it ’s complicated . There ’s not one individual thing that makes it work . There are a million .

Some of it is harder than others .

“ With on - demand , obviously , the content is produce ahead of time , ” Winston said . “ So we have enough clock time to get the subject matter , we can take them and code them , we can give more compute and more fourth dimension to squeeze the bit and quiz it and everything . With live — whether it is linear firm duct or live sport — everything is veridical - time . ”

Latency is something every live supplier has to distribute with . And we ’ve seen YouTube TV implement a user - verify option that allow for low response time — less clock time between what you see and when it actually happen . But Winston mentioned that “ glass - to - chalk ” sentence being 10 endorsement from when a play hits the tv camera to when it ’s on your video .

So I asked him point - blank : Is Amazon Prime Video the fastest ?

“ I would say we do have the depleted latency . And I would say that Super Bowl was available on Prime Video through Paramount+ . And I conceive we had the lowest latency across the instrument panel — even quicker than broadcast medium . ”

Latency is just part of the streaming equality .

“ It is also synchronize across devices , ” Winston pronounce . “ And the other thing that was spotlight in the picture is also its unsex rotational latency . So we do n’t ramble away . There are some streams that can drift away . We are focalize on ensuring that it is deposit and is lowest latency . ”

Winston ’s problem plain involves more details than those of us on the pay side of the equation will ever make out . But he also gets the bottom phone line .

“ at last , ” he said , “ customer — when they hit play on Prime Video — they just want it to work . ”