Media / IPTV
Direct play vs transcoding
Why media servers need different sizing when streams are passed through directly versus re-encoded for each viewer.
Direct play is mostly a delivery problem
Direct play sends the existing media file to the viewer without changing codec, resolution, or bitrate. The server still needs enough disk throughput and network capacity, but CPU demand is usually modest.
This is why a media library can need a large port even when CPU load looks low.
Transcoding is a compute problem
Transcoding re-encodes video into a different format or bitrate. That moves the bottleneck toward CPU or GPU, and a bigger network port will not fix a saturated transcode queue.
If many viewers need transcoding at once, size the server from expected active jobs before choosing the final bandwidth tier.
Use separate roles when growth becomes serious
Large platforms often split storage, transcode, and delivery roles. This makes failures easier to contain and helps each node use the right hardware.
Bandwidth Pool can help when those roles sit across multiple servers with uneven demand.
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