An elderly lady just asked me why you can watch a movie on Netflix whenever you want. Since you can start the film regardless of other customers who are watching the movie at the same time but already at the e.g. 52nd minute are. The lady said that Netflix can't have that many copies of each movie that every client can watch a movie at the same time. I tried to explain that it's not like in a movie rental company, where you can spend a movie only a certain number, but I ask myself now, how is it possible that you forward a video on a platform as desired, play and can stop? If you click on a video, will the whole movie be sent home? / Will you download the whole video temporarily? Very confusing question, I hope that someone has an answer, thank you in advance!
The films are stored as digital data in a memory, which also has the option of random access. A classic analogue movie offers only the possibility of a sequential access. You can get to the middle of the movie only if you're fast forwarding.
In typical digital memory, however, you can immediately jump to any location and read the data. A program can thus access the data for many users at almost the same time in various places. This allows the streaming services many users see the same movie at different times.
For many reasons, the film is only transmitted bit by bit. This saves time, for example.
The original is in Netflix as a file on the server. Everyone who looks at the movie gets a copy. This is called stream, but only means that only the part is being copied is being viewed.
Youtube is exactly like that.
