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The Insidious Creep of Latency Hell

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the defeat-the-lagbeast dept.

Twinbee writes "Gamers often find 'input lag' annoying, but over the years, delay has crept into many other gadgets with equally painful results. Something as simple as mobile communication or changing TV channels can suffer. Software too is far from innocent (Java or Visual Studio 2010 anyone?), and even the desktop itself is riddled with 'invisible' latencies which can frustrate users (take the new Launcher bar in Ubuntu 11 for example). More worryingly, Bufferbloat is a problem that plagues the internet, but has only recently hit the news. Half of the problem is that it's often difficult to pin down unless you look out for it. As Mick West pointed out: 'Players, and sometimes even designers, cannot always put into words what they feel is wrong with a particular game's controls ... Or they might not be able to tell you anything, and simply say the game sucked, without really understanding why it sucked.'"

4 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Changing TV channels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And here I thoguht I was the only one complaining that changing channels gets slower and slower with every new receiver box.
    On analog it was basically instant, less than 100ms.
    First digital box took half a second. Full HD box sometimes takes a whole second or more (and it's not even deterministic anymore)

    That SUCKS big time!

    1. Re:Changing TV channels by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's down to compressed stream buffering. An analog box could be instant because every frame was transmitted uncompressed. With digital TV, you have to wait for a keyframe at least.

    2. Re:Changing TV channels by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When I was a kid I had to wait for the B&W TV to warm up, now I'm an old fart I have to wait just as long for the digital set top box to boot up. Somewhere in between I had a TV that came on instantly.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  2. N900 by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The N900 suffers from this, alas.

    I can't comprehend why the phone app isn't in memory on boot. It's a PHONE. Instead, when the phone rings you have to wait several seconds for the phone application to load.

    In contrast, my wife's new HTC Z snaps and zings along with Android, even though it's "bloaty" Java / Davlik.