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We want the world and we want it in 5 minutes

4 December 2007 18:57 by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus | 17 comments

The results of a survey by Broadbandchoices.co.uk are in not surprisingly a majority of respondents, some 61%, rated "downloading DVD quality films in five minutes" as the feature they're most interested in having available through their broadband internet connection.

Despite an interest in lightning fast movie downloads, consumers surveyed aren't necessarily prepared to pay a premium for the capability. Nearly the same number indicated that either they wouldn't pay more for it or they weren't sure if they would. Interestingly, watching videos was actually rated as the least popular current online activiy.

"From our results it does appear a little contradictory that respondents rated 'watching TV' or downloading films as being the least amount of time spent on the internet in a week and yet when asked which future service would be of most interest rated them as the most popular," said Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices.co.uk.

"It could be that current services are not at a high enough standard to warrant utilising video services. If speeds were improved, consumers are more likely to use broadband to watch TV and/or download films," said Phillips.

Although it doesn't apparently offer any real answer to the problems posed by delivering high quality video across residential internet connections, it does raise a point that what we need to make such a thing a reality goes beyond simply adding another 2-3Mb of download capacity to your local cable system. Instead, planners should be looking at countries like South Korea, which has internet connections upwards of 50Mbps available to most homes.

There was some criticism of the difference between marketed and real speeds by broadband providers. Phillips said "We need transparency from providers on the kind of speeds customers can actually expect to get, rather than flashy advertising and ever increasing top speeds and this needs to be carried forward with the future of broadband."

Source: BBC

Permalink to this article

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Joshewah (Senior Member) 4 December 2007 23:56
There was some criticism of the difference between marketed and real speeds by broadband providers. Phillips said "We need transparency from providers on the kind of speeds customers can actually expect to get, rather than flashy advertising and ever increasing top speeds and this needs to be carried forward with the future of broadband." According to Comcast my intarwebs should be chugging along at 6Mbs, but in actuality I average between 3.5Mbs and 4Mbs according to 7 different online speed tests. I called Comcast and asked about it and they gave me a BS answer of course. I really hope something happens to this cable company. They throttle my internet and charge me for speeds that I don't receive... :( [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 4 December 2007 23:57
ahiah9 (Member) 5 December 2007 2:00
I have the same problem. I use Insight, which is owned by Comcast. I am told by the ads that I can download at "up to 10 megs a second", but have to throttle myself @ 250 k down & 55k up, or else they will pull my account for violating the TOS. TOS states that I cannot, knowingly or not, use my connection for anything that is harmful to the network. After talking to tech support, this means that while I am capable of getting 10 megs, I'm not allowed to because that puts too much strain on the network. They aren't prepared to give EVERYBODY that much speed, they just advertise like they are. The whole fiasco began when I oh so greedily set my BT client to download at 500k, and up at 79k. I speed test @ average 10megs down, and 135k up. Anyway... comcast sucks,and thanks for letting me rant. [ + quote]
domie (Member) 5 December 2007 6:30
what those surveyed really seem to be saying is " I don't want to go out to the store to pay for a dvd, I would rather download it, copy it to a blank dvd and then transfer it to my TV and stand alone player but I'm not prepared to pay any more money for it as I'm trying to get something that costs money ( admittedly too much ) for free " why else would they say downloading dvd quality movies is the most important point but watching tv or movies on the PC the least important at the same time. Where did they do their survey ? Pirate Bay HQ ? [ + quote]
chaos_zzz (Junior Member) 5 December 2007 9:34
ppl only want more bandwith cuz of piracy since downloading a movie takes too mcuh time, to avoid the drama ppl rent movies and then they make backup's in case they can never rent it again. cuz that's the purpose of a backup right? But if movies could be download in 5 minutes plus a couple more for rendering and burning the movie industry would face dark times beside that wich is not really the point here. i'm getting punked too here in south america where my compnay advertises a service but they only guarantee 10% of the bandwith wich means that i'm paying for 2 megs wich is like 100$ here and it's the top one(i know south america is lame) anyway on peak hours i get 0.3 wich shows how everywhere companies are lying to us. there should laws for this we canot be paying for what we are not getting. [ + quote]
hughjars (Inactive) 5 December 2007 12:14
The dream of a totally downloaded future is a long way off. Even in the so-called developed world we just don't have the connection speeds (nevermind download limits) to allow wholescale d/l'ing - and especially not for the big file sizes of the retail quality high def stuff. [ + quote]
tester22 (Inactive) 5 December 2007 13:40
FYI............Comc-ASS, the single worst and biggest lying company available boast my speed as a 4Mbps xfer rate and I'm luck to pull down 2.5Mbps. It's fraudulent, it's false, it screws people and I wish the owner, CEO and all the execs at Comcast would drop dead. [ + quote]
area_51 (Newbie) 5 December 2007 14:17
fkin right! [ + quote]
oofRome (Senior Member) 5 December 2007 16:23
I too, have lower download and upload speeds than what comcast advertises. Way lower. But I have never liked or trusted comcast. I use them because there isn't really any other choice. [ + quote]
domie (Member) 6 December 2007 6:22
*Originally posted by chaos_zzz:* But if movies could be download in 5 minutes plus a couple more for rendering and burning the movie industry would face dark times . well then we are already in dark times, I don't believe I have the fastest consumer internet connection in the world but my virgin media 20 mb line always maexes out ate xactly that... 20 mb ( so long as I don't download more than 4 GB during their 4pm-12pm peak period time ) and it takes about 6 minutes to download a divx movie from Newsgroups. granted it isn't dvd quality but it's near enough, a dvd movie at 4.7 G takes about 30 mins. [ + quote]
domie (Member) 6 December 2007 6:23
*Quote:* *Originally posted by chaos_zzz:* But if movies could be download in 5 minutes plus a couple more for rendering and burning the movie industry would face dark times . well then we are almost already in dark times, I don't believe I have the fastest consumer internet connection in the world but my virgin media cable 20 mb line always maxes out at exactly that... 20 mb come rain or shine ( so long as I don't download more than 4 GB during their 4pm-12pm peak period time ) and it takes about 6 minutes to download a divx movie from Newsgroups. granted it isn't dvd quality but it's near enough, a dvd movie at 4.7 G takes about 30 mins. [ + quote]
xSModder (Junior Member) 6 December 2007 15:37
So is it a problem that we want it NOW? I personally don't enjoy driving 20 minutes, standing in like 5 minutes, then waiting another 10 minutes before the movie starts. In that time, I could probably be about halfway done with a movie download. And all the broadband companies providing you "ultra-high" speeds are mostly liars anyways. That's why I'm sticking with DSL ;) [ + quote]
chaos_zzz (Junior Member) 6 December 2007 20:34
*Originally posted by xSModder:* So is it a problem that we want it NOW? I personally don't enjoy driving 20 minutes, standing in like 5 minutes, then waiting another 10 minutes before the movie starts. In that time, I could probably be about halfway done with a movie download. And all the broadband companies providing you "ultra-high" speeds are mostly liars anyways. That's why I'm sticking with DSL ;) Well for me it takes me about an hour to go an get back the house, i that time i already downloaded the movie, and since i've my computer hooked to my lcd trought s-video i can watch instantly , and while i watch that one i'm downloading the next one :) (from itunes ;).. yeah u liar), i think everyone is just trying to get back some money from our expensive internet bills. [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 6 December 2007 20:35
lubricant (Junior Member) 6 December 2007 20:53
yeah, i guess you should check for best effort service, cuz bellsouth and earthlink seem to do just fine... i never quite liked the idea of shared connections with cable though. -=HEY=- [ + quote]
chrialex (Newbie) 7 December 2007 16:33
I have Mediacom, supposedly the 7th biggest cable company in the US. My package is the 15 meg download yet I am lucky to get over 1 meg. My connection is intermittent at times, and whenever I call, I have to wait an average of 10 minutes to talk to anyone, no matter the time. Over a month ago the had a tech come out and look at my system, and they said that my signal strength is great, but there is something wrong with their system somewhere because of the low speeds and intermittent connection. Still no word back from them. Oh, and they use a cable modem/router from SMC, the SMC8013WG, which I have not found any information for anywhere. Looks real old. /rant off [ + quote]
Mez (Senior Member) 8 December 2007 10:32
No chaos_zzz that is what they say. What they do is make more money by selling speeds they do not deliver because they don't invest the profits into hardware they just pocket it. They figure only a handful of persons are smart enough to figure that out. If those complain the tell them politely to f*ck themselves and continue pocket the money. They may state that they suspect piracy as a motive for the complaint. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 23 December 2007 18:17
We are all having this one same problem people wanting things now not tomorrow i want it yesterday and with broadband speed the funny thing is that the western world put the speed limits and download limits in place and not the east and the has has no limit whatsoever why do we live in such a capitalist society that everything thing is about money making and not about moderation. [ + quote]
lubricant (Junior Member) 25 December 2007 18:15
*Originally posted by borhan9:* We are all having this one same problem people wanting things now not tomorrow i want it yesterday and with broadband speed the funny thing is that the western world put the speed limits and download limits in place and not the east and the has has no limit whatsoever why do we live in such a capitalist society that everything thing is about money making and not about moderation. i agree. i think its because we live in a society of excess... yessir [ + quote]