Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth caps)

[Citizen Erased]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I think he's saying he wants to cut out unneeded downloads such as all the previews and the initial few minutes of each movie. He would be willing to sacrafice instant starting and waiting a few minutes to watch a movie or preview and not come so close to the consumption limit.

Is this even still done for HD? I'm guessing it isn't done for sure on HDX (or if it is somebody screwed up!).

[redwein]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

Is this even still done for HD? I'm guessing it isn't done for sure on HDX (or if it is somebody screwed up!).

I'm sure it is for HD. It would be even more important than for SD. I agree there is no benefit to doing it for HDX.

[NA9D]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I have 4 series 3 Tivos and, in the beginning, they insisted that they come out to install the cable cards. It turned out that I had to show them how to do it and they thanked me for it. Thankfully, now you can go to the service center and pick up/install the cards yourself.

Wow. Here you have to schedule a $30 appointment. Then on top of that, they tried to add an extra $6.00 charge per card to my two cards after I got my new Tivo installed (I've had two cards on my account for almost a year now - one just wasn't being used). I called them and they said that was a mistake and are refunding me. I still get charged $1.50 a month for the second card but for something that costs me less than a trip to Starbucks, I'm not going to fight over it.

I don't think you'd have luck in my market with self service cable card installs. The tech support staff doesn't know how to handle them with the actual installers all the time!

[wenlock]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I think he's saying he wants to cut out unneeded downloads such as all the previews and the initial few minutes of each movie. He would be willing to sacrafice instant starting and waiting a few minutes to watch a movie or preview and not come so close to the consumption limit.

Nicely put. That is exactly what I am proposing.

[aaronwt]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I'm still waiting for an external storage solution to expand my storage capacity.
I'd also like the ability to offer more bandwidth for uploads and downloads.

[raaurora]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

Nicely put. That is exactly what I am proposing.

I think it's a great idea. Even an avid movie viewer is only going to watch a small percentage of vudu's content. Downloading every preview and every initial scene has got to be overkill and a great opportunity to lighten the overall consumption per box.

[RonV]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

Just remember the 30 seconds and previews only download once. Once you have them you have them. So if VUDU adds say 20 movies per week you get 10 minutes of VUDU movie content and previews. This is not a very big piece of bandwidth.

[wenlock]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

Just remember the 30 seconds and previews only download once. Once you have them you have them. So if VUDU adds say 20 movies per week you get 10 minutes of VUDU movie content and previews. This is not a very big piece of bandwidth.

Are you certain? Here is my super-rough calculation (I am using the assumption that the SD and HD 30s headers are downloaded to the Vudu box on a weekly basis):

An SD movie download size is approx 1GB per hour of viewing. So, this equates to a 30s header size of 8MB (for instant SD).

Now include an HD header (for instant HD); This would be at least 2x the SD size, which adds another 16MB for 30s of HD; bringing the total up to 24MB per movie.

Multiply the 24MB by the number of movies and TV shows added per week, which I would guess is around 200, judging by the counter displayed in the Vudu catalog.

This gives a grand total of 200*24 ~= 5GB download usage / week. (It should be noted that I have not factored in the previews and the fact that some previews are full screen, and some not ... which would make this estimate even higher). This demonstrates to me, that even a seemingly small download per movie adds up quickly when multiplied by the number of movie updates.

My observation that corroborates this estimate, is that the 5GB total (above) is in the same order of magnitude as the Vudu box's actual weekly download (recorded at ~8GB / week).

My point restated, is that the download of this header and preview information should be optional. I am quite prepared to wait a few seconds for the movie to buffer before it starts.

[redwein]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I guess the question is whether there are 20 or 200 new movies/tv shows added per week. I'm curious about that too.

[rstone]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

This gives a grand total of 200*24 ~= 5GB download usage / week. (It should be noted that I have not factored in the previews and the fact that some previews are full screen, and some not ... which would make this estimate even higher). This demonstrates to me, that even a seemingly small download per movie adds up quickly when multiplied by the number of movie updates.

Personally, I'm with you in that I'd like more control and options over my bandwidth from the VUDU box, without having to use tools like QOS. And control over headers and previews, on one hand would be nice, but then again I can see how that might create a problem, due to the P2P infrustructer of their service. For if many decided to not download headers and/or previews, there would be less boxes to seed the other boxes creating a larger load demand upon those who don't. Interesting problem.

[RonV]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

I guess the question is whether there are 20 or 200 new movies/tv shows added per week. I'm curious about that too.

20 was just a swag for movie content and I was thinking that would be about 200 mb per week. I didn't take in account TV content. I am sure there a more variables.

Making previews optional would be difficult since the preview is part of the license agreements with the content owners. And if I am not mistaken the higher quality, full screen, previews are not fully downloaded on the VUDU until you watch them so coming up with a calculation for the bandwidth here is a bit more difficult.

This is a interesting discussion since bandwidth caps are showing up all over the ISP space. Not only are the streaming content vendors going to be caught up with this so are the online backup vendors, VOiP, etc.

[aaronwt]

Re: Suggestion for reducing Vudu bandwith usage (to prepare for impending bandwidth c

At least Comcast has a resonable cap of 250GB. Of course I prefer my FIOS cap which is currently unlimited.