I was just chatting to a friend about this whole broadband rip off - and he asked the question - so what ? Well the truth is that today it doesn't really effect 80% of us, but it might be that your one of the few it does.
If your paying for 8mb or above, you should be able to watch HD TV streamed over the web to your PC (which in turn can be connected to your HD TV) companies like BBC, DivX are all working on making this possible - however if your 8mb is really only 2 or 3 mb then you can't watch it without severe buffering (it pausing to download the next chunk) or it having to be in lower quality.
"...The typical Internet connection is 2 to 3 megabits per second, says Laszlo. The minimum needed to stream HD-quality video is 5Mbps. Laszlo added that even if bandwidth were to be increased, computers with lower graphics processing power may be unable to display the richer details that HD provides. ..." - full article
Point is that for music - you don't need much more than 2mb for reasonable quality, unfortunarely its proved those of you paying for that aren't getting even that ...
Unfortunately in this case you don't get what you paid for people paying for 8 often get less than 4 ... you can stamp your feet but there is very little they can do about it - and frankly when ever I have bought broadband I have known I am not going to get it ... it depends on many factors including where you live (how far from the exchange etc... ) but shouldn't your ISP, before you buy it, before you expect high quality HD to be streamed over your unlimited (by the way, its not always unlimited) connection ... shouldn't your ISP should tell you the truth?
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2 comments:
Gerry,
I guess I don't know too much about the ins and outs of why I am not getting the full connection speeds advertised by the purveyors of broadband equipment and ISP's when they are trying to promote their product. What I do know is that If they tell me in big bold, expensive advertising that if I buy their product I will get an impressive connection speed (lets call it X) which is greater than their rival who is only going to deliver up Y speed for the same money. Now I go out and buy that product based on their sales job and only receive Y speed which equates to a fraction of the connection speed promised then I am being ripped off.
I understand that these company's are fully aware of what they are doing and bring in their attorneys to cover their exposed asses as far as litigation is concerned. Their attorneys insert cleverly worded and innocuous sounding phrases such as 'up to X speed'. They know that Joe Public is not going to see the import of that disclaimer until or unless he is confronted with catastrophic failure, or his equipment fails to perform as expected. It's a RippOff it's A Con and we just allow them to get away with it.
I would be interested to know if there is anyone else out there who feels cheated by this con-job and to find out what options are available to us consumers when we are lied to or purposely misled?
What do you think Gerry? Am I over reacting?
The issue as I understand it is that we want to be able to (at Mixit.TV) offer streaming video which anyone can watch ... I know that it should naturally drop to a lower quality if the bandwith is lower - but that would mean that everyone is getting lower quality than we would want to show.
Imagine you come to Mixit.TV and the video you watch is rubbish - are you coming back for the next chapter? Would you know its actually that your ISP is crap ?
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