Streaming Glossary: 25 Streaming Terms Explained

Streaming menus and reviews are full of jargon. Here are the 25 terms that actually change how you watch — the rest you can ignore.

Video Quality

• Bitrate: data per second — higher means more detail, more bandwidth.
• Adaptive bitrate: the player changes resolution on the fly to avoid stalls.
• 4K / UHD: 3840×2160 pixels — four times 1080p.
• HDR: wider brightness/colour range; needs an HDR-capable screen.
• HDR10 / Dolby Vision: HDR formats; Dolby Vision uses dynamic metadata.
• HEVC (H.265): modern compression — same quality at half the data of H.264.
• Codec: the compression recipe (H.264, HEVC, AV1).

Delivery

• CDN: servers worldwide that deliver the stream from near you.
• Buffer: pre-loaded seconds that absorb network dips.
• Latency: delay — critical for live streams.
• Throttling: an ISP deliberately slowing a service (rare, disputed).

Content & Business

• VOD: video on demand — watch whenever.
• Simulcast: episodes released abroad shortly after original airing.
• SVOD / AVOD / TVOD: subscription / ad-supported / transactional models.
• OTT: streaming delivered over the internet instead of cable.
• DRM: copy protection tech.
• Watch party: synced simultaneous viewing with remote friends.

Using the Terms

The ones worth acting on: bitrate and adaptive quality (set manually), HDR (check your screen), and CDN (explains why one platform loads faster). Everything else is just menu noise.