Video Streaming & Playback

• The Modern Video Playback Stack: An End-to-End Technical Deep Dive

  12 min read • Published on February 20, 2025 • Last Updated On July 18, 2025

  The delivery of video over the internet has evolved from a rudimentary file transfer into one of the most sophisticated and demanding applications of distributed systems engineering. The simple HTML <video> tag, while the final point of presentation, belies a vast and complex infrastructure designed to deliver a high-quality, uninterrupted viewing experience to a global audience across a heterogeneous landscape of devices and network conditions.