'House Of Cards' In 4K Will Eat Broadband Caps Like Popcorn Shrimp
from the pricing-innovation dept
After years of pretending that broadband usage caps were necessary because of network congestion, the cable industry not all that long ago admitted that congestion had nothing to do with it. While the industry still pretends that usage caps on broadband networks are about their expression of "creativity" and "pricing innovation," most people realize caps were always designed to milk yet more money out of an already profitable network (and make no mistake, unlimited, flat-rate pricing is profitable), while allowing gatekeepers to simultaneously cash in on and inhibit Internet video. Carriers are relentlessly trying to expand usage caps under the banner of "fairness," and they're aided by an uncompetitive broadband market.Despite claims that imposing caps is about altruism or even helping grandmothers, most consumers understand that ISPs want them to pay more money for the same product at a time when network hardware and bandwidth costs are falling. Generally, ISPs that do impose caps insist that these caps will be flexible as modern usage evolves. That claim is about to get tested more seriously as next-generation game console downloads and 4K video slowly come to market.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings not that long ago stated the company's planned 4K streams will need at least 15 Mbps but optimally 50 Mbps. Streaming a 1080p 3D movie from Netflix at the moment eats around 4 to 5 GB per hour, a total that could jump to closer to 20 to 30 GB per hour with 4K video. Similarly, Sony is cooking up a 4K video download service that could involve downloads as high as 100 GB per title. It's a subject getting revisited with everybody binge-watching "House of Cards." Tacking 4K video on to existing bandwidth consumption begins to get very bandwidth intensive when you're talking about entire series at 4K resolution (how much modern compression codecs like Google's VP9 or H.265 will help are very rough estimates):
"Streaming in 1080p on Netflix takes up 4.7GB/hour. So a regular one-hour episode of something debiting less than 5GB from your allotment is no big deal. However, with 4K, you've got quadruple the pixel count, so you're burning through 18.8GB/hour. Even if you're streaming with the new h.265 codec—which cuts the bit rate by about half, but still hasn't found its way into many consumer products—you're still looking at 7GB/hour. But you're not watching just one episode, are you? Of course not! You're binging on House of Cards, watching the whole series if not in one weekend then certainly in one month. That's 639 minutes of top-quality TV, which in 4K tallies up to 75GB if you're using the latest and greatest codec, and nearly 200GB if not. That means, best case scenario, a quarter of your cap—a third, if you're a U-Verse customer with a 250GB cap—spent on one television show. Throw in a normal month's internet usage, and you're toast."Gizmodo doesn't note that many people's bandwidth caps are even lower. CenturyLink, Suddenlink and AT&T lay claim to tens of millions of DSL users (which the companies don't intend to upgrade anytime soon) who face 150 GB monthly caps on top of a significant flat monthly fee -- plus sometimes the cost of a mandatory copper voice line and all the additional, annoying fees that entails. Those slower, 3-10 Mbps connections in reality cost very little to provision and provide, but there's the rub: these customers are being aggressively beaten about the head and neck on price because of limited nationwide competition. Innovation and creative pricing, indeed.
ISPs have long defended low bandwidth caps by claiming that the majority of today's users wouldn't be impacted by them, knowing full well that the majority of tomorrow's users would. That day is coming quicker than you'd think, and it's worth watching whether ISPs are flexible on allotments, or if they keep existing allotments firmly in place to intentionally clothesline Internet video customers -- especially those looking to cut the cord.
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Filed Under: 4k, broadband, house of cards, reed hastings
Companies: netflix
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Netflix could fix this if they wanted to
http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2014/02/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/17:182/20140219195 707:E16D3F38-99C9-11E3-95BA-D3942B05288E/
and
http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2014/02/sort/t ime_rev/page/1/entry/10:182/20140220122705:299ABABC-9A54-11E3-BE39-C7D4F930862C/
The short version: Neflix is insisting on DRM to please Hollywood AND they're insisting on streaming. If they would drop both and just let people download (slowly) for later viewing, this issue would largely evaporate.
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However: let's note that with Netflix original content, the DRM is purely optional. Nobody makes them use it, and as well all know (or should know) DRM is only deployed by inferior people equipped with inferior minds. So why doesn't Netflix get a clue?
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Also Netflix is also pretty new to this original content businsess, and they've been innovative enough at it without trying something technically that's different from the system they've already developed and people are used to.
i.e. you have a point about DRM but are working really hard to use it to villify Netflix. There are other services that offer digital downloads like Amazon, so you can vote with your wallet.
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Personally, I'm not a customer of any of these: movies and TV shows aren't really my thing, and per Sturgeon's Law, 90% of them are crap anyway. So I don't buy from Netflix or Amazon nor anybody else, and thus I have no dog in this fight -- except for opposing DRM in any/all its idiotic forms.
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Just like DirecTV, Roku and Apple TV should come with LOTS of memory that allows you to download the 4K movie and play once the download is completed. All that is needed is to make it all but impossible to extract the movie other for the intended purpose, watching it on your 4K TV. You won't be able to keep the movie but if you are getting free from a streaming service you can always download it again.
Ideally everyone should have access to fiber optic service that would provide the needed speeds. For rural users this just ain't going to happen. We have a company that wants to bring gigabyte FO and the local utility, Frontier, is opposing the move for much of my area. Frontier isn't going to build us out they just want to mess with the interloper. Just makes you want to scream.
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Anyone telling you that we have enough already is either lying or willfully ignorant.
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Although another big part was that upscaling DVD players actually look pretty decent considering the source material.
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If you start watching a movie at DVD quality and switch to Blu-Ray quality, you'd never want to use DVDs again, subject only to data caps or cost premiums.
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It probably helped that the price difference was less extreme, but they also brought a number of other benefits to the table in addition to the better picture quality; they took up much less space, you could play them on more devices, skipping ahead a particular point was a lot less fiddly and you could pad out the discs with bonus features.
By comparison, Blu-Ray doesn't offer anything new and innovative except for higher picture quality... if the movie or TV show was filmed on HD or 4K-capable equipment, otherwise the improvement is at best marginal. (Seen any classic black-and-white movies reissued on Blu-Ray lately?)
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4K is Only beneficial on specific monitors for the use in such things as scientific, medical, or engineering work (such as x-rays) and NOT for moving images at 60fps
The ONLY benefit that 4K allows is that 3D can now be rendered at full 1080P for both eyes . Otherwise it is marketing hype that is not based around the actual functionality or viewing ability of any human EVER!
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Response to: Jake on Feb 21st, 2014 @ 4:50pm
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Re: Response to: Jake on Feb 21st, 2014 @ 4:50pm
I have 2 DVD/VCR combo units. I still enjoy watching videotapes. There's the nostalgia factor, for one thing. for another, I have hundreds of VHS tapes. I'm not going to throw out a perfectly good video collection. And many of these tapes, as I pointed out, contain content unavailable on DVD, much less Blu-Ray.
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While playing these games thru Onlive, I was streaming game data at over 5 megabits a second, non-stop. I ate through my 'usage cap' in less than a week.
Guess what happened to Onlive. Yup, they went bankrupt.
4k movie streaming will never happen, unless it's the ISPs doing the movie streaming directly to it's customers. Otherwise, ISPs will require a cut of the profits, in the form of 'sponsored data' fees.
Broadband internet in South Korea is up to 50x faster than US broadband speeds, and costs about $28.50 a month.
Meanwhile in the US. We're still in the stone ages, arguing about artificially low 'usage caps', record high subscription costs, and whether or not our infrastructure can handle 4k movie streaming.
We're like the frick'n Slowsky turtles, and it's our country who invented the internet! Talk about a slap to the face.
Let's merge Comcast and Time Warner together. I'm sure that'll help make things better. /sarcasm
We're boned as a country. We're so corrupt, that we can't even compete with China on trade, or South Korea on broadband. That's why we're boned.
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Bandwidth caps? What's that?
Mind you, 1080p is plenty fine for me.
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Re: Bandwidth caps? What's that?
"Bandwidth use is considered to be excessive when it significantly exceeds the usage characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service."
"...reserves the right to suspend or terminate service in response to a customer's excessive bandwidth use, without notice to the customer. "
Comcast cites 17 GB (median value - they don't report the average) as typical. Cable-cutter that I am, I used to use 1-200 GB monthly, until Comcast put up the new 300 GB cap. Now, I target as close to 300 as I can get every month without going over. Wonder what "typical" and "excessive" mean to Bell Aliant.
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Maybe the whole competition thing does actually work. Living proof is in the maritimes.
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No, I don't think so.
Here is what will happen.
Comcast, having swallowed TWC and realizing that the FCC is wimpy, toothless, and weak, will imposed bandwidth caps on everything that's not Comcast content.
Verizon, observing this, will do the same.
They will dare the feds to do something, and the feds, having been bought off as well as emasculated and infiltrated, won't.
Netflix will die.
As will anything Netflix-like.
And Comcast and Verizon will sell the content they want the way they want when they want.
The end.
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And the idiots will still be cumming in their pants at the sight of "better quality images" which, let's face it, won't even be noticable.
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Caps
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Better scripts please
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The Paperback Revolution Repeats Itself In Video
(*) If you are lending something, you have to keep records of who borrowed what.
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1080p fallback
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