Google's New Lyra Voice Codec + AV1 Aim For Video Chats Over 56kbps Modems In 2021

[birdie]

Who is on 56k modem in 2021? I was when I was a kid. 20 years ago.
Problem with audio video today is not bandwidth, but bufferbloat and latency.

Welcome to dozens of 3d-world countries where the Internet is priced to the stratosphere, there's barely any 3G coverage and people often use 2G/Edge. It's so cozy to insinuate from your 2-storey house in the middle of US/EU while enjoying a 5G connection.

[oiaohm]

Who is on 56k modem in 2021? I was when I was a kid. 20 years ago.
Problem with audio video today is not bandwidth, but bufferbloat and latency.

I have had adsl2 due to bad line conditions give me worse than 56k Modem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

There is the packet radio 56K modem is still on the faster side of that. Of course there are still a lot of places with 56k modem speeds is fast.

[pracedru]

Doing good audio on 56kb/s is hard, so its pretty impressive that they can do video.

[NathanG]

Who is on 56k modem in 2021? I was when I was a kid. 20 years ago.
Problem with audio video today is not bandwidth, but bufferbloat and latency.

There are house in the UK and USA on DSL that have barely 128Kbps so something like this would be massively useful.

[nranger]

Welcome to dozens of 3d-world countries where the Internet is priced to the stratosphere, there's barely any 3G coverage and people often use 2G/Edge. It's so cozy to insinuate from your 2-storey house in the middle of US/EU while enjoying a 5G connection.

Not to mention the likelihood of being stuck with an expensive low bitrate internet connection, while also owning the Threadripper required to encode AV1.

[Serafean]

Who is on 56k modem in 2021? I was when I was a kid. 20 years ago.
Problem with audio video today is not bandwidth, but bufferbloat and latency.

The less resources something needs to be functional/usable, the more resilient it becomes to bad conditions. 1st world: When a natural disaster hits, and 4G networks get downgraded to HSPA/3G in order to save on rarefying power, this will prove very useful. Just a reminder: 3G is 144kbit/s

Just look at the pandemic. During lockdown streaming services disabled 4K streaming, because the networks might not handle it (and they weren't willing to test). Having low bitrate high quality transfers really matters.

[skeevy420]

It's hard to believe that there are still locations in some countries with Dial up connections or very low bandwidth DSL1 connection, but there are.

That describes the greater county area outside the city I live in. Heck, it probably describes half my state if we're being real.

I once lived across the street from where my town's cable monopoly's network ended so settled for tethering Edge for four years because I was on one of the actual unlimited AT&T plans...that I lost when my Mom upgraded the family account and thought we'd all like subsidized iPhone 3GS's that required new accounts. Not only did I lose my kickass unlimited plan, that iPhone sucked so much ass. Ended up trading it for a Motorola Bravo that I liked so much better even though it was technically worse...Android FROYO (2.1) was a better OS. I miss the 2.1-4.0 years. The golden era of Android before Google went and Googled it up.

Yes, I did 2005-2009 on the fuckin Edge network off a Motorola RAZR. Now that was a good phone. Does not want the new RAZR.

[NateHubbard]

Welcome to dozens of 3d-world countries where the Internet is priced to the stratosphere, there's barely any 3G coverage and people often use 2G/Edge. It's so cozy to insinuate from your 2-storey house in the middle of US/EU while enjoying a 5G connection.

Are those 3d-worlds still using low polygon counts too? Someone should look into that.

[treba]

Sounds nice. Now, when are we getting hardware accelerated encoding and decoding for webrtc? It's still missing for Linux.

There is decoding support for it in Firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1646329) - unfortunately not yet enabled by default though. Not sure about the situation on Chrome.

Edit: here's the bug about encoding in FF: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1658900

[piorunz]

That describes the greater county area outside the city I live in. Heck, it probably describes half my state if we're being real.

I once lived across the street from where my town's cable monopoly's network ended so settled for tethering Edge for four years because I was on one of the actual unlimited AT&T plans...that I lost when my Mom upgraded the family account and thought we'd all like subsidized iPhone 3GS's that required new accounts. Not only did I lose my kickass unlimited plan, that iPhone sucked so much ass. Ended up trading it for a Motorola Bravo that I liked so much better even though it was technically worse...Android FROYO (2.1) was a better OS. I miss the 2.1-4.0 years. The golden era of Android before Google went and Googled it up.

Yes, I did 2005-2009 on the fuckin Edge network off a Motorola RAZR. Now that was a good phone. Does not want the new RAZR.

That's terrible. In US, due to its vastness its very hard do wire up fast internet. Alternatives like Starlink will be available later this year. Where I live (UK), they will be offering 50-150 Mbps for £89 per month. Very expensive, but it should go down with time, and speed should go up too.

Myself I have fibre connection 60/20 Mbps for £26 per month.
Also in the UK it's not necessary to have "packaged" everything. I have separate mobile phone contract for £7.5 per month (with thousands of minutes, texts and 4GB of Internet) and unlimited home Internet for £26 per month. No home phone. No TV subscription, I use free broadcasted aerial TV. No TV License. No Apple.