

i dont know if that has a specific term, but it generally revolves around the render queue. different players/renderers handle what happens when the render queue isnt ready to play.
MadVR (a popular upscaling renderer for MPCHC) for example has an option to pause render queue till full.
one player may have it setup as always play each frame which causes random slowdowns/speedups, other might implement it as drop frames to always be time synced correctly. the latter is especially used if the hardware is too slow to display the content in realtime.
as a person who works in that industry pretty much. the only people buying singles are people who do it internally else its sold on bulk because the money gets split between the ecycler and the company who originally owns the product.
outside of having less processing to deal with per order, a company buying things in bulk is less critical about the condition of a product than an individual end user.