Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 300 kB/sec lets you get 1GB/hour, which means you can get a perfectly watchable 1080p movie in 2 hours. Yes it's nice now that I have 3 MB/sec down, but it wasn't hell before and I lived with that for 10+ years. Many people still have this kind of connection - typically billed as 5000 down / 800 up. Streaming, I have no idea.
Rest assured, I don't use the internet to download television.
Oh, that's interesting. Sorry for stereotyping you as a torrent user. What kind of large files are you downloading?