Results tagged “net neutrality” from Michael Pellegrini's Blog and Rants and Stuff
I was looking at file sizes of Blu-Ray movies today. The average size of 320 current titles was 27 GB – for just the movie alone. You add in all the extras and what not that usually come with a DVD (deleted scenes, extra content, etc) and the size jumps up to an average of 35 GB per movie.
Looking at Comcast’s proposed threshold of 250 GB before they bill you extra, that translates into viewing just nine Blu-Ray movies before you hit your limit – not to say any other internet activities. Just watch nine movies and you’ve blown your cap for the month.
Present Day
Right now, people might watch 2-3 movies a week – mostly rented and viewed on a TV, not a computer – along with maybe some HD sports and other HD content as well (concerts, news, TV shows or whatever). You can stream video content to your PC (from Amazon or iTunes for example) but it’s all small format and not portable to your HDTV.
I don’t know about you, but I hate watching movies on my computer – I have a small 42” HDTV and a good 7.1 surround system. If I want to watch a movie, that’s what I use. Screw the PC.
Other current uses of bandwidth might also include streaming a few hours of music, or buying some songs at iTunes or Amazon.
A Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet
Comcast recently announced it was considering extra charges for users who consume more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month. After 250 GB, users could purchase additional bandwidth in 10 GB amounts for $15 each.
On its face, this plan sounds very reasonable. I’ve monitored my bandwidth usage before, and I’m what many would consider a fairly heavy user. In a good month, I generally wouldn’t exceed 30 GB of bandwidth. That’s a little peer to peer file sharing, a lot of music streaming, occasional software downloads. Maybe a Linux image here and there.
But if you look closer, this is nothing more than an insidious attempt to hijack the future of the internet.
Jim Lynch over at ExtremeTech called it:
“I suspect that Comcast is making a preemptive attack to hurt Apple and other downloadable content companies. In effect, Comcast is trying to kill the downloadable content market in its infancy. It sees the future and in that future Comcast may be nothing more than the owner of some dumb pipes that carry everybody else's valuable content.”
Downloadable movies and other similar sorts of content delivery systems are just right over the horizon. The only thing that’s holding off deployment of downloadable movies is bandwidth.
