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Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

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Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet speeds are higher, alas the latency is still perceptibly there and for the set of games I play you cannot really beat the speed of light: It does matter. Regardless, what bothers me and many others is streaming games becoming the industry standard due to the DRM benefits and taking away ownership from gamers. That would be really shitty.

You'll be happy to know that the current latencies are about two orders of magnitude higher than what going at the speed of light will offer. That makes me think that we will easily see a 10x improvement in latency in 15-20 years.

Source to that? My napkin math tells me speed of light across US is ~10ms, my experience tells me latency is ~100ms (certainly not 1s), so that's only one of of magnitude.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#22
20 years ago I worked on a project for streaming films in South America. It was simply not viable: the few that had internet used dialup. A few years later, ADSL started to show up. This year I myself cancelled cable and switched to streaming as sole source of video.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#23
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be happy to know that the current latencies are about two orders of magnitude higher than what going at the speed of light will offer. That makes me think that we will easily see a 10x improvement in latency in 15-20 years.

you think we'll able to communicate faster than light?

No, the poster is saying that latencies are about 100x the theretical minimum latency due to speed of light, and thinks that will reduce to 10x.

I don’t know if these numbers are true, but poster was not claiming faster than light.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#24
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be happy to know that the current latencies are about two orders of magnitude higher than what going at the speed of light will offer. That makes me think that we will easily see a 10x improvement in latency in 15-20 years.

you think we'll able to communicate faster than light?

There are several reasons why Internet latency is inflated over direct-route speed-of-light latency. Some reasons may change others may not.

1) speed of light in fibre is 2/3c - unlikely to change soon 2) fibre is laid in the ground on a circuitous route - rarely changes but does happen 3) queueing delay - that's often the main culprit, changeable, but hard (see the buffer bloat debate)

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet speeds are higher, alas the latency is still perceptibly there and for the set of games I play you cannot really beat the speed of light: It does matter. Regardless, what bothers me and many others is streaming games becoming the industry standard due to the DRM benefits and taking away ownership from gamers. That would be really shitty.

You'll be happy to know that the current latencies are about two orders of magnitude higher than what going at the speed of light will offer. That makes me think that we will easily see a 10x improvement in latency in 15-20 years.

How do you get two orders of magnitude? Round trip for light is ~150 ms. Using a cable it is slower, so more like 250 ms. Current latencies are only like 2x that.

Even with free space speeds and tunnels through the earth you only get like one order of magnitude.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#26
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could leverage the edge cache they have to get into streaming games. Or maybe build a YouTube competitor.

What would be a compelling differentiator from what YouTube offers?

Better customer service and content management? YouTube's system for handling copyright claims is a huge mess and they don't have much incentive to fix it without a serious competitor. They've burned a lot of creators and some people would jump ship if there was a fairer alternative.

Netflix could also leverage the same strategy Hulu or the Epic Store has... pay/incentivize creators and partners for exclusivity. I hate this strategy as a consumer, but it does seem to be effective.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#27
Cable is a stinking pile of sog stuff. 90% of the channels are garbage and the picture quality sucks. I recently put an old-fashioned $40 antenna in my attic. It pulls in 156 channels (I’m in OC, CA about 40mi from Mt Wilson and 80mi from San Diego).

Compared with the 148 channels Spectrum provided (about 1/2 where duplicates) the quality is better on the few I watch intermittently (PBS, ABC, CBS...)

The crazy thing is my bill dropped from over $200 to $70 (for just internet).

Yea, I’m and idiot for not doing it sooner.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#28
post #3

I do wonder how Netflix can stay competitive in this market. They already have lots of debt, new competitors coming up, stock price is quite high. It seems they need to produce or license new content, so people do not cancel. But licensing content gets harder as competitors start their own services.

85% of new spending at netflix is for original content. That's building a huge moat that will be hard for others to cross. I'd personally cancel our Hulu or HBO subscriptions before we touched Netflix.

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things would have prevented streaming from gaining in popularity: - Slow Internet speeds. This has changed. - Cable bills not increasing. If cable was cheap no one would care about Netflix. But when it gets around $200/month most people start questioning why they need cable TV. I did and changed my plan to Internet only, and have not regretted it. Cable TV is garbage and it's cheaper to pay $10/month for HBO GO…

Internet speeds are higher, alas the latency is still perceptibly there and for the set of games I play you cannot really beat the speed of light: It does matter. Regardless, what bothers me and many others is streaming games becoming the industry standard due to the DRM benefits and taking away ownership from gamers. That would be really shitty.

Why would latency be an issue with streaming recorded video - the subject of the post?

Re: Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide

#30

Cable is a stinking pile of sog stuff. 90% of the channels are garbage and the picture quality sucks. I recently put an old-fashioned $40 antenna in my attic. It pulls in 156 channels (I’m in OC, CA about 40mi from Mt Wilson and 80mi from San Diego). Compared with the 148 channels Spectrum provided (about 1/2 where duplicates) the quality is better on the few I watch intermittently (PBS, ABC, CBS...) The crazy thing…

156 stations with one antenna in one location, really?
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