Comcast E-mailing Customers About Caps > Conveniently ignore HD

said by BF69:

LEGALLY acquired HD movies online are in the 6 GB range. So you'd have to download about 42 a month to go over the cap. Considering they cost about $6 to rent, that's $250 a month. If one can afford that I think one could afford getting a second account.

said by Frank:

i dont know about movies, all i know is i was streaming several gigabytes a day watching episodes of lost for free on abc.com in hd. As more and more people watch tv in hd, the streams will be available online too for free

said by BF69:

As far as I know ABC's "HD" offerings stream at a max rate of 2 Mbps and as low as 850 Kbps. Even if you get 2 Mbps stream all the time ofr 6 hours a day that = 150 GB a month. Leaving 100 GB left over for other things.

said by Frank:

1) you're assuming only one person lives there

2) it only streams 850kbps if your connection is crappy or if your bandwidth is being taken up by other things.

said by BF69:

If there is more than 1 person in the house using the connection then #2 would apply would it not?

Also say there was 4 computers in the house. Are you suggesting that all 4 would stream HD content at the same time? So each person in the family is in his/her own little room by themsleves watching TV on their computer screens? Kind of sad isn't it?

Ayways I doubt even if you had 16 mbps connection that 4 or even 3 people could watch HD content at the same time and stream it as the max 2 mbps rate. I don't care if the math says that's only 8 Mbps. In the REAL world there would be issues with the stream.

I'm not sure why people bring up the most extreme examples. yeah sure if you have 8 people inthe house each with their own computer and each using their connections at least 16 hours a day, yes a 250 cap will be a problem. You know what I'm not worried about those people. Well I am worried, but not for the reasons we ae talking about here.

said by Frank:

1) no, #2 wont apply if there's more than 1 person in the house. most cable connections are at LEAST 6mbps. If you were talking about a 3mbps dsl connection then i'd agree with you.

2) nowadays most people have a computer and a small TV in their room and a big TV in the living room since it's rare that anybody ever agrees on watching the same program so I don't see why you think it's far fetched for different people wanting to watch different things in their rooms?

3) you're failing to account for all the other crap that goes on and gets downloaded. IE: software updates, video game console downloads, online gaming, vpn traffic, etc. etc. etc.

4) you're also failing to account for other hd services such as hulu. also, how long do you think it will be before netflix, youtube, and other networks start streaming in hd eh?

5) I believe that the original argument you were trying to make was something along the lines of 'the only people who would use that much bandwidth was for illegal means' or at least it was so implied when you wrote 'LEGALLY' in all caps. All of the examples I listed are legal, and it is possible to easily reach said limits with a household of two or three people, thus defeating your argument, so now you're saying that it's EXTREME which is your opinion and not a fact.

said by Soldae:

It's simple to use examples of current technology and say "oh 250gb cap is plenty!" Yet, earlier someone posted a log of basically his UL & DL for a year. You can see that in just one year, he's been increasing his usage on ONE computer. The point is more to look toward the (hopefully) near future. They want a foothold to say "well we've had a cap now for awhile, we're not changing it." This will keep HD streaming from becoming more of a reality. Watching TV on your computers will have its growth slowed to a crawl. What happens if you can't watch TV on your computer? You watch Comcasts cable.

If you can't use Netflix to stream your movies? You use Comcasts on-demand.

I have two computers (soon to be a third) on my network, a PSP, a DS, a Wii, an Xbox360 and a PS3. I really don't want to have to monitor how much bandwidth I'm using each month just because Comcast doesn't want to spend money to accommodate the people it has sold service to. I also don't want to see new, innovative products, get hampered because people are afraid of going over some limit.