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Proposed Standard Would Address Video Buffering
Lucas123 writes "Sony, SanDisk and several other technology providers have formed a group and proposed a standard that would use predictive software to pre-load content onto mobile devices in order to preempt buffering issues due to bandwidth bottlenecks, which industry experts say will only worsen over time. 'Intelligently coordinating content delivery in advance to local device storage lets consumers enjoy their video, games, periodicals, books and music when they're ready,' said Susan Kevorkian, a research director at IDC. The proposed standard also raises the question: do we really want Amazon downloading everything it thinks you want to your tablet?"
If it's coming from Sony, I'm not sure it would be particularly suitable for a standard. There's probably half a dozen potential patents there.
Howsabout this: Provide more bandwidth than a Dixie cup on a string and then buffer a bit for safety when the user actually selects content.
... eat their data quota in no time. Consequently, telcos will get enough money to pay us royalty for our patented technologies.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Are these providers going to cover the charges associated with downloading unneeded data to consumers devices?
Back in those days when I had a crappy internet connection, I downloaded all video files. Sure, I had to wait some time until it was done, but at least I didn't have to wait every 10 seconds while watching the video. It's much cleaner, you can fast-forward, go backwards, watch the whole thing a second time, with no delay whatsoever. And no Flash.
I never really understood why video sites don't have a download option. It would make watching videos over a small internet connection so much better. (Then again I guess they don't want us to leave their site and watch videos without their annoying ads)
do we really want Amazon downloading everything it thinks you want to your tablet?"
It's all fun and games until you visit 4chan and get something preloaded you don't want.
Sony has formed a group and proposed a standard that would use predictive software to pre-load rootkits and spyware onto mobile devices in order to preempt content piracy issues due to increasing bandwidth, which industry experts say will only get larger. 'Intelligently coordinating rootkit delivery in advance to local device storage lets consumers enjoy their legitimate video, games, periodicals, books and music without fear of piracy,' said Susan Kevorkian, a research director at IDC.
FTFY
It's been done before & it sucks, especially on low-end devices (this is why whenever I find a Windows rig that has & will never have more than 1GB of RAM, I disable the Superfetch & readyboost services!) What they REALLY need is an intelligent distributed proxy system at every call tower where hits are tallied by region/state/nation, in that order, & pre-distributed accordingly-- pushing it to every device is just fucking retarded.
You have a 'data quota'? What kind of a 3rd world country still has those...
"Data plan for 3 or 4G mobile networks" sounds better to you?
Even on the tubez, do you think is better to have unlimited but QoS-es traffic or a limited traffic quota with no QoS?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Actually some of those download accellerators were pretty clever. They downloaded the HTML for all the sites that a site linked to. So for instance while I'm reading a story on the NYT all of the linked stories start downloading. It isn't perpetual motion, it's just anticipation.
Similarly if Netflix wanted to start downloading all of the episodes to a Miniseries that I start watching while I sleep so that I can watch them in HD even with a slower connection... all the more power to them.
In fact my two 2TB HDDs are mostly unused. If they want to download all of my recommended Netflix movies but dynamically delete them when I need more space.. again all the more power to them if it doesn't interfere with my normal browsing.
There is a lot of time while I'm at work where my internet connection could be going full tilt caching my potential entertainment. In fact it doesn't even have to cache all of it--just enough so that there is no buffering.
Yeah but my phone isn't busy while I sleep, it's plugged in and I bet Cell Phone companies aren't worried about tower overload since everyone is more spread out in their individual homes (hopefully on wifi nonetheless).
I only just finished filling up my 32GB Zune player with music from Zunepass. It took me about 3 years of selecting songs I wanted to listen to. With a subscription service like Zune it really makes sense to just fill the device to the brim and then delete unlistened to music.
If it takes what I have chosen and creates a playlist it's usually very good with SmartDJ. I could see that working perfectly for music.
Honestly though based on my Netflix behavior I imagine they could make a very well educated guess as to what I might stream next. Most people have about 4-5 shows they watch. Once TV shifts almost exclusively to TCP/IP then every week you'll probably download the same 4-5 shows.
What I would really like to see is to shift more service databases to local ISPs. Why should Netflix have a server in everybody's hometown? How large is their h264 library? 100TB? Instance a copy of likely films to the ISP so that they can stream it directly to their customers.
I don't get this. People can't wait a few seconds for buffering? A few seconds for some data from some computer that is probably hidden in a data centre somewhere, thousands of kilometers away to get turned magically into a signal that is then transported to you over the biggest computer network ever created by humanity, then it is beamed somehow to you no matter where you are - walking down the street, sitting in your car at traffic lights, or lying in bed.
I can wait a few seconds; I spend them thinking "...how the fuck!@? This is awesome!@#"
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a US Postal Service delivery truck full of Bluray Discs.
My wife and I occasionally watch Netflix streaming, but the quality is terrible, so we usually just plan ahead and get the Blurays delivered.
We get 3 at a time, and it takes a day for the movies to get to us. So, if a BRD is 50GB, that's 150GB/24 hours, which is well beyond the point where our ISP would say we've exceeded our "unlimited" usage plan and turn us off anyway.