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.)"

Comments

LAG!

[Tyler Eaves]

Lag's a bitch though.

Not millisecond.
Not second.
Not minute.
Not hour.

Lag measured in DAYS.

Hell, even carrier pidgeon is probably faster ;)

Re:LAG!

[susano_otter]

I've yet to experience significant "packet loss" from Netflix, and I go through about 16 DVDs a month with their service. Since February, I've received 1 disk I couldn't read, and one disk that was broken (but I think I stepped on that one).

Packet loss is negligible.

1GB Data Transfer

[TheOste]

What's the fastest way to move 1GB of data nightly from LA to San Fran?

Fed-Ex

Next they're going to tell me

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

that I could send a couch via FedEx easier than I could over the internet? These people are just plain nuts.

Oh wait...

Really old quote

[RocketJeff]

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" - SysAdmin humor

Re:Really old quote

[RocketJeff]

Ladies and Germs, we have a winner. The first to post this joke is Mr. RocketJeff. Don Pardo, tell him what he's won!

And I actually read the article first (not just the /. story). I must have seen it just as it hit the front page...

I was at Best Buy this weekend and saw an ad for Netflix (Best Buy and Netflix have a cross-marking agreement). I pointed to it and told my wife "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes" - of course she looked at me like I was an idiot (nothing new...).

Re:Really old quote

[Soko]

Here's the low latency patch for that, by the way. Might bring down the ping times. ;-)

Soko

Re:Really old quote

[houston_pt]

IANAA (I am not an archeologist) but the oldest reference to such an expression on groups.google (they need a Oldest first option...) that I could find was this post wich states:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag tapes.
-- Dennis Ritchie

The quote is attribuited to Dennis Ritchie.

Bad ping times.

[Kenja]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Netflix is great, but...

[NineNine]

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.

The USPS is a-okay

[doc_traig]

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

They've opened three!

[TheMatt]

To wit, from everyone's favorite echoing news site: link. They should have them in Boston, NY, and DC.

NetFlix rocks for us HDTV junkies

[Bryce]

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. ;-)

Disclaimer

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

(Disclaimer: I don't work for Netflix or the post office.)

Thanks for letting us know. I was afraid there might be some bias. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Slashdot, the Prince of Darkness, or Illuminati.)

Re:Disclaimer

[phriedom]

You only think you don't work for the Illuminati. ;-)

Just imagine how fast snail mail would be...

[Quixadhal]

...if you didn't have to share bandwidth with all those spammers.

Re:Streaming?

[Waffle Iron]

You can't stream the mail.

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.

But how's the latency of the connection?

[tunabomber]

This reminded me of the time I read Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems.

Re:Pretty good security too...

[Space Coyote]

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..

Re:-1 redundant

[EnderWiggnz]

never underestimate all your base in a beowulf cluster of hot grits down natalie portmans pants! ...

profit!

Re:1,500TB? Doubt it.

[GMontag451]

Maybe Netflix distributes 1,500TB a day of movies, but that's using DVD's MPEG-2 compression. Encode 'em with DivX and you're gonna slash that figure by what... 80-90%?

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.