Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
If people want this, they'll need to accept pay-per-byte metered internet in my opinion. On-demand streaming like Netflix places far, far more demand on the broadband infrastructure than regular broadcast television, which is essentially multicast (a couple hundred streams or so delivered to tens of thousands or more outlets simultaneously), so the infrastructure cost of the broadband is going to be much higher per-capita to deliver, both downstream to your home, and upstream at the provider's head end internet connection.
That's the very first step in all of this - if the consumer won't bear the cost of every byte of bandwidth consumed, it means the broadband companies will turn around and ask each internet channel to pay back some of their advertising and subscription revenue to offset distribution costs, and we'll be right back where we started.
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It really depends. I watch about 4-5 different TV shows, but most of them are on at different times of the year (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Eastbound and Down, etc). It basically breaks down to maybe an hour or two of TV per week, plus a soccer game and, during football season, 8 hours of football on a Sunday. That's maybe 20 GB of bandwidth/month, and that's probably being generous.