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Snail Mail Still Winning The Bandwidth War
LR_none writes "Today's New York Times has this short piece suggesting snail mail is the leading broadband technology, at least for video movies on demand. The article states that the 8 to 9 gigs of data on a DVD would take two weeks to download at 56kb, making Netflix' three-day distribution by mail seem speedy. (Since they can send three or more movies at once, Netflix compares favorably with DSL download speeds, too.) The author estimates Netflix alone distributes 1,500 terabytes a day, which is impressive considering the Internet carries 2,000TB a day (by estimates cited in the article). The 'immediate gratification' aspect of Internet consumerism has given a huge boost to companies like FedEx and UPS, but it's surprising to think of the post office as being the leading infrastructure provider for digital entertainment, in terms of market share and efficiency, for the forseeable future. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Netflix or the post office.)"
Lag's a bitch though.
;)
Not millisecond.
Not second.
Not minute.
Not hour.
Lag measured in DAYS.
Hell, even carrier pidgeon is probably faster
TODO: Something witty here...
The MPAA claims that the internet has creates significant consequences and risks -- citing to supposedly a kazillion feature films being pirated daily. This simple piece of arithmetic is a useful hunk of rebuttal.
What's the fastest way to move 1GB of data nightly from LA to San Fran?
Fed-Ex
that I could send a couch via FedEx easier than I could over the internet? These people are just plain nuts.
Oh wait...
Nothing like snail mail to remedy my need for DVD's via my 28K line.
:-)
Of course, if you're using a 28K line, you're probably not instantly gratified that often anyways.
This space for rent.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" - SysAdmin humor
Tried playing Quake by snail mail. Took forever before the letter saying I'd been fraged 10^5 times for just standing there to arive.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if you live on the East Coast, forget about it. Mail takes 5 business days, coming and going, making Netflix not all that cheap. If you get the basic service (3 movies at a time), if you watch the movies THE DAY you get them and send them back immediately, you still can't realistically get more than say, 6 movies a month. If Netflix opened a warehouse on the East Coast, shit, I'd get the best damn service they've got. If not for that huge mail lag for us on the East Coast, their service is fucking fantastic.
High throughput... high latency :(
If I need it there Sometime Later This Week, I have no problem using the USPS for anything. They've never lost a piece of mail I was waiting for or sent out, and I have done a lot of business with patient buyers on eBay that were happy with the ship times and the handling with USPS. In fact, recently I have read about more issues with sending delicate equipment UPS/FedEx than with USPS Priority, for example.
Broadband just isn't a reality/necessity for enough people yet, and the size of applications and media in digital format is growing and is already too great for the Average Joe who has an affinity the Internet but doesn't know how to download 4 GB worth of video successfully (or patiently, for that matter).
- DDT
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
To wit, from everyone's favorite echoing news site: link. They should have them in Boston, NY, and DC.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
NetFlix alone helped justify the cost of
;-)
getting an HDTV for me - I find I spend
more hours per week watching Netflix-supplied content than anything else, and most DVD's are in widescreen
formats.
It works out to be cheaper than Blockbuster if you like watching lots of
movies, and is more flexible than the
pay channels.
I wish they had more content though, as
you can pretty quickly run through all the
movies you haven't seen already.
What about Satellite?
I have a 40gb PVR and it's filled all the time.
From a +3 comment this morning to the front page! Nice! :-)
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
...if you didn't have to share bandwidth with all those spammers.
Streaming snail mail doesn't work for DVDs, but you can get it to work for VHS.
The trick is to pull one end of the tape out of the cartridge, then glue it to a post card. Drop the postcard in the mail and leave the rest of the tape next to the mailbox.
Now, as the head end of the tape makes its way through the postal system, it automatically despools the rest of the tape which streams along behind it.
As soon as the head end of the tape arrives, the customer inserts it into in an empty cartridge and starts to play it . As the VCR plays, it sucks the remainder of the tape out of the postal system at the appropriate speed.
This reminded me of the time I read Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Just think, there was a virus attack on the USPS network last fall, and it was front page news for months, even though it only infected a handful of network nodes.
Meanwhile Klez keeps popping up in my Inbox again and again..
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of cargo plane filled with ait-3 tapes. :-)
never underestimate all your base in a beowulf cluster of hot grits down natalie portmans pants! ...
profit!
... hi bingo
And you will suffer the loss of quality and the inability to play them on a real TV that goes along with it, no thanks. DivX sucks.
I joined Netflix, one of the first of the DVD rental mailer companies, a long time ago and like it a lot. I was interested, then, to read a rough calculation that, in terms of 190,000 MPEG-2 format DVDs, Netflix's daily bandwidth totals 1.5 TB. This is a sizable fraction of the current total estimated Internet daily bandwidth: somewhere between 2-4 TB. Of course, Peter Wayner's calculations do not allow for the online delivery of movies in more compression-efficient formats, such as the MPEG-4-derived DIVX, where a typical 4-7 GB DVD can be reduced to around 700 MB with minimal quality loss.
I guess the CD manufacturers also thought they were safe, when a typical CD occupied 700MB of data in an era of mainly dialup connections. Then along came MP3 with its one-tenth compression ratio and so much for that idea. Netflix's current success is a temporary artifact of our restricted bandwidth and lack of suitable MPEG-4 hardware players.
And I found out from some surfing that some Netflix competitors, such as CafeDVD, QwikFlicks, and DVD Avenue, are cheaper and offer porn, something Netflix avoids.
Da Blog
I'm suprised no one has looked at the 2000 terrabytes/day number.
I'm sorry, that seems just a bit low. 1 site pushing 1 Gb/s is 84 Terrabytes/day. That means only 23 sites have to use that much bandwitch for that 2000 number to be hit. As I know of at least one site that pushes (not counting incoming) 10 Gb/s, that number is just a little unreasonable.
I'd really like to know where people get these kinds of numbers. I have seen silly numbers like this one and the 7 billion pieces of e-mail per day numbers and have to wonder where they come from. Acording to some numbers I saw released at one point, Hotmail alone receives over 1 billion e-mail per day.
I really have to wonder if someone is just making this stuff up or if they are looking at a very small set of data and extrapolating from there. In either case, I think better methods need to be used to create these kinds of numbers.
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
Now, now, now, now, now, and I'm going to hold my breath until I get it!
*Thud*
In the words of Scotty, " I canna change the laws of physics Cap'n."
Honestly people, what sort of harm are you actually going to come to by having to wait to watch a movie until you receive it?
Hey, here's what I do. I walk to my library ( 5 minutes each way) and take out three videos. They already have more in stock than I can watch in what remains of my lifetime and the collection grows daily. If I do this early in the morning I can watch all three, return them, and take out three more, watch them and then repeat that one more time, making the last return the next morning when I return for three more to start my day. Repeat until death.
Pretty good "bandwith," and ecologically friendly too.
KFG
People's reaction to electronic mail is astounding. The combined effect of government repression of cryptography and statements of "no expectation of privacy" can not be underestimated. How is it that people who expect to go to jail for intercepting the post also expect people to intercept and read their email?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.