Add Real Video QoE Telemetry to Your Player in an Afternoon Starter code available on the full article - link at the bottom. The Problem Every video team gets asked these three questions the day after launch: How long does it take for video to start playing? How often does the player stall mid-playback? How often does playback fail outright? Most teams over-engineer the solution. Here's a minimal approach that actually works. The Architecture HLS.js Player → Fastify API (Node 22) → SQLite → Dashboard No Kafka. No Grafana. Just three files: a React component, a Node endpoint, a SQL view. Step 1: Set Up the Project mkdir video-qoe-starter && cd video-qoe-starter npm init -y npm install hls.js fastify better-sqlite3 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Step 2: Instrument the Player The core insight: HLS.js exposes events that map directly to the three QoE metrics: hls . on ( Hls . Events . MANIFEST_PARSED , () => { session . startTime = performance . now (); }); video .…