Abstract

Video streaming is becoming a part of our lives. With the hardware on smartphones getting more and more powerful each day, people can stream videos wherever and whenever they want. While wireless Internet technology is improving download speeds on mobile devices, variety in bandwidth over time can still cause interrupts in play. We hypothesize when people are streaming videos on a mobile device, their reaction toward initial buffering and interrupts is different based on the genres of the video content. Our goal in this project is to determine the preferences for buffering versus interrupts for mobile streaming content through a two phase study. First, we created and sent out survey to students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. We found people do not expect any interrupts when they stream a one minute video, people expect 1 to 5 seconds buffering time at the beginning of a video streaming session, and music videos and funny videos are two of the most popular genre of video that people like to stream on mobile devices. In phase two, we developed a user study in which we asked participants to watch three sections of a funny video and three sections of a music video that we edited to have artificial buffering in them and recorded their feedback. By analyzing the data, we found people are more sensitive to interrupts when they are watching a music video than a funny video. Comparing our study result with the result of a similar study done on desktops, people opinions toward buffering and interrupts are similar on both mobile and stationary device. The results of this study will be helpful in improving quality of service for video streaming websites.

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