Video service Binge On 'broke the internet' but 99pc of users love it Do you remember the butthurt and angst heaped on T-Mobile US when it launched its Binge On service earlier this year? T-Mobile US offered a toll-free all-you-can-watch mobile video service, trading quality for quantity. The Binge On user would get video downsampled to 480 pixels, but none of it would count towards their data …
If you're using a sub 10" screen to watch video... then it really doesn't matter one iota if it's served up in 480p or 1920p, because the human eyes ability to accurately distinguish between the two is severely diminished at that scale.
What matters more is the DPI than the screen res.
I can't personally comment on a comparison to 4K on a phone because personally I think the idea of a 5.5" 4k screen is ridiculous and whilst I have seen a few in stores, the screens looked no better than the 1920x1080 on my own phone... and I can adjust the DPI of my screen.
If you're using a sub 10" screen to watch video... then it really doesn't matter one iota if it's served up in 480p or 1920p, because the human eyes ability to accurately distinguish between the two is severely diminished at that scale.
What matters more is the DPI than the screen res.
Neither of those two statements is true.
To take the second one first, what matters is DPA (dots per arcsecond [of vision]). That changes with the distance of the screen from the eye. This is why "jumbotron" type screens at sporting arenas and advertising venues can use individual light bulbs (as low as 0.5 DPI depending on the specific type of bulb) and still create high resolution images -- the screens are far enough away that each light bulb occupies ~50-100as of vision.
Now to the first: my 5" phone, when held about 1-1.5 feet from my eyes, occupies about the same space as my 50" televison across the room (and about 1/2 the width/height of my laptop screen 2.5 -3 feet away.) I can clearly make out the pixels on any of those screens at a 480p resolution at those distances. I can even make out the pixels at 720p. At 1080p, the pixels are hard to see, though still visible on my laptop (the largest in terms of arcseconds at the distance I keep it.)
People get to watch more video. Those that hate the concept can opt out.
As an ATT subscriber with a 5G data plan who streams maybe 10 minutes of video a month across both wired(200meg comcast with 1TB) and wireless it doesn't impact me either way but sounds like they had a good idea(i think i said that before here)
"an unprecedented 99 per cent satisfaction rating with punters"
The problem with this sort of claim, is that generally those in favour of something are much more inclined to answer satisfaction surveys. You end up with skewed results and think that everyone is in favour, which isn't the case.
Not really true, people who are hugely dissatisfied are prone to answering satisfaction surveys to show their dissatisfaction. The "meh, whatevers" are probably under represented but that would also be conjecture.
What is key, is who was asked, what were they asked, how were they asked, how safe are the results it etc
This information is missing which makes the result meaningless. However all that information might be in the stated report, I just don't have the inclination to find out.
Some people who cited net neutrality lot slipped up by confusing the two, but that doesn't mean that net neutrality itself is a bad thing.
I also wish the Guardian would realise that when you scroll down the front page and they take that to mean you'd like your data allowance used up by downloading a load of huge photos and converting them into thumbnails.
Ok, I'll bite.
I'll presume for a moment that T-Mobile is actually mobile-only and not "wireless broadband" so the smaller size pics are fine on a small screen. Is that true of tablets too, which might be on mobile internet? I don't know so I'll leave that aside.
For all the stupid name calling of van Schewick, she is absolutely correct. I've seen the same thing here in Oz. (yes, that's a pun on the picture). Optus advertise offer free unlimited music to mobile devices. Hooray! Except that they don't mean what they say in the headlines (shock!). What they actually offer is that streams from some specific companies don't count towards your download quota.
That means that if I buy music streaming from Spotify I can stream all day to my mobile. If I choose a less popular service, say, OzMadeupEthnicMusic.com or my own purchased music sitting on my own home server - that will be costed against my download quota. Van Schewick was right, (if badly phrased), the deal gives preferential treatment to particular commercial interests and that is a net neut issue.
Do I think Spotify paid to be in this joint venture with Optus? Yes. Does it push people away from smaller, less well established companies (or non-Australian companies) and towards Spotify and a couple of other well-entrenched players? Yes it does. Does discouraging traffic which doesn't go to a few possibly-cached corporate destinations benefit Optus and encourage them to keep their download quotas low? Yes. If Optus becomes dependent on Spotify's payments, how long will the other "most favoured" streaming services last? Maybe there will be a joint venture between Optus and Spotify (or Telstra/Foxtel/Presto...)
What we have here are large players paying ISPs for favoured access where the control isn't speed of delivery but overall bandwidth resourcing which would otherwise make the service impractical. What happens, for example, when your data quota is low but MS have given them a backhander to be included in your quota? Most people use skype and are happy, but how does a new p2p video service gain any traction? The ISP/telco's start picking up extra revenue from the application providers who then start charging customers who can't go anywhere else because other video conferencing providers have been effectively locked out. What we also don't want is technical specs used to discriminate. Is everyone using 480p and the ISP says if you are using 475p then you get a free pass, and, oh look, only one service does that!
This is a net neutrality issue where data quotas are quote low. I am, however open to being proven wrong. Give me a proxy through which I can request any video file or stream and it is transcoded on the fly, or the stream is limited to a particular transfer rate, or some standard way I can signal that my data stream is video and I can control the size so it is not counted against my quota.
Yeah, I didn't think so. Its a cute bird, but its still a cuckoo.
wot if all the Internet providers (globally) allowed free access between the hours of 7 and 10 on a Friday night, in their respective timezones, so whatever your connection, be it Landline, fibre or mobile, you could stream or download or upload anyfink you want......would dat brake it?....or should we just let Plusnet carry on with their current plan....which seems to be working a treat!
I do get tired of this being a term of abuse. And for it being short-hand for 'stupid liberal idiots'.
It originally meant not calling people by names they don't like. So you found out if people preferred Black Americans or African Americans or whatever and then used that term when speaking to them or about them. It then widened to mean an attempt not to be bloody offensive if, by a little effort, you could be more neutral and courteous.
But this is apparently contemptible and emasculating, because a real man should be able to call anybody whatever they damn well please, because real red-blooded chaps should be striding the globe like gods. I presume.
> paranoid political movement that rallies around an “open internet” or “net neutrality”.
Picked up some telco stock lately that could do better?
I am rather thankful that "somebody" gives "a damn" about those "issues", as for some reason they are damn important. Much like other pesky "odds and sods" such as human rights or privacy, too little people actually bother on a regular basis, and whoops, shit's gone.
If that means that there is a little ruckus about some throttling service (cutting quality as a service – splendid! It's almost as brillant as Nestlé managing to sell cold coffee in a can) with such amazing benefits as still being able to make "that important video call" (seriously?) than so be it.
...tomorrow websites will be expected to pay for the privilege of sending data to your phone.
Still: at least it shows that the data bandwidth is actually available, so the entire argument about people using too much data and needing to be throttled must be untrue.
It's a strange paradox that paying more affects Maxwell's Laws of Electrodynamics.
"at least it shows that the data bandwidth is actually available"
I thought carefully and almost reached the same conclusion but what if the point was to 'incentivise' media companies to downgrade their own content to 480p so they get viewed in preference, and so reduce overall data use? If so its a genius stroke from T-Mobile. But then I remember my experience of being a T-Mobile customer and doubt they are that shrewd.
Proving that bandwidth is available and then demanding high prices because of it's scarcity is clear profiteering.
"incentivising the network operator to invest in a better network"
Or, perversely, causing them to down sample further when the network gets saturated. Meaning people get less for the same price.
Just saying that that is another possible outcome, and the way network operators work, more likely. But maybe I am just being cynical.
I'm on a "grandfathered" plan where I can disable Bing-On. I'm ditching T-Mo the second it becomes mandatory. If there's a 1.5 Mbps version of the video available, it looks pixelated and turns to mud when anything moves. Anything needing more than 1.5 Mbps of streaming simply doesn't work.
Clearly expressing my feelings towards Bing-On would make me sound too much like John Legere and the moderators would probably delete my post.
The objection is to ISPs giving preferential treatment to services that pay them for the privilege. The reason being this discourages new companies and services as they are unable to compete on a level playing field with the established players.
It doesn't matter that, in the short term, consumers like the product. In the long term it's against their interests.
One of the big US carriers - Yahoo perhaps? - saved data by compressing all images on a web page significantly. In those days of dial-up, it saved a lot of time, and you could generally still see what the image was, if you squinted... there was the option to turn it off if you wanted to see more detail in the image, but I suspect many never did.
Equally I doubt many will disable this. It's like the old VHS formats: they quality of the image was *terrible* particularly with regard to colour resolution but people would cheerfully watch it even though better systems - even better domestic tape systems - were available.
I have a T-mobile CellSpot. It supports 60Mbps down and achieves that speed consistently in speed tests. It blankets my apartment building in 4G on bands 4 and 2, then transports it to the T-mobile network over an IPsec tunnel.
I also have T-mobile One. It guarantees I'll only get 1.5Mbps max speeds on anything the T-mobile network detects as video (accurately or otherwise). I can pay an additional $25 per line per month to disable Binge On like I used to be able to do for free. My previous 4-line plan was a total of $20 more each month and included unlimited data with the option to toggle Binge On.
CNN.com has a video player. It lacks a quality switch (at least in mobile Chrome on Marshmallow) and does not buffer when paused. CNN is not a Binge On participant.
Would someone please explain why it's so awesome that I just had to switch from my CellSpot to a very weak WiFi signal (weak from where I was sitting at the moment) in order to watch a 98 second CNN clip without rewinding to buffer every few moments? Where was the "optimization" or even downsampling that's supposed to keep things running smoothly?
(P.S. A note about the Ghostery sidebar: the company is fairly transparent that they sell your blocking habits to advertisers and their peers. Their stated intention is to encourage less-intrusive ads that end-users feel less inclined to block. Is that really so evil?)
"(P.S. A note about the Ghostery sidebar: the company is fairly transparent that they sell your blocking habits to advertisers and their peers. Their stated intention is to encourage less-intrusive ads that end-users feel less inclined to block. Is that really so evil?)"
YES. I don't want advertising at all. ANY third party can hijack the ad and turn it into malware. Besides, I skip commercials on TV and stopped listening to radio because I hate the ads more than I like the music. If this doesn't work for you, then you need to find another way to fund your endeavor.
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