Posts by Peter Finney

Extended Lord of the Rings Blu-rays to hit Blighty

Erm, no thanks.

Bought the original trilogy, appalling quality, took them straight back. No mention if they've fixed that this time round and films spread across 2 Blu-Rays, get real!

Virgin Media dishes out free bandwidth boost

It takes two to tango...

If you're getting slow downloads check your sources.

Torrents are usually slow because they are shared by normal people on standard home broadband connections with poor upload speeds. You can only get data at 20mbps if the other end can supply it at that rate. And lets take a random stab in the dark at maths. Most home connections >1mbps download, <1mbps upload. There is no room in that equation to supply everyone at full download speeds!!

So virgin don't quite top out at that 24/7 but when I want something I go to servers that I know can shunt 20mbps (nntp anybody?) and I usually get 15-20mpbs no problem. Can't complain about that.

As for throttling, do I need that speed 24/7? HeII no. At 20mbps a 40 minute TV show takes about 5 minutes to download, what am I gonna do, watch 8 shows simultaneously 24 hours a day to just keep my broadband connection busy.

What's important is getting what you want quickly when you want it. Not killing the network all day just because you can.

Despite all the complaints Telewest->Virgin has been the most reliable provider I've had since broadband launched, I did not enjoy my time outside of cables reach! ADSL and it's pathetic "Up to" claim can got rot..."Up to 24mpbs"...no, quick line check, "Up to 6.5mpbs MAX, THAT'S IT!"...and guess what, you still couldn't download torrents at 6.5mpbs.