Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic 249
First time accepted submitter sqorbit writes "Netflix and Youtube are gaining ground not only on the competition, such as Amazon, but also over peer-to-peer file sharing. Netflix claims more than 30 million customers and believes it could double that number in the future. Traffic from Netflix and Youtube amounted to over 50% of Internet traffic in September. Meanwhile Bittorrent traffic is down slightly (7.4% from 10%) in Internet traffic compared to last year. Could more people be satisfied with current video offerings or are less people finding useful things to download via file sharing?"
Build it (Score:4, Insightful)
... and they will come.
The thing about relative measures... (Score:5, Insightful)
Could more people be satisfied with current video offerings or are less people finding useful things to download via file sharing?
Or is it something that's not a false dichotomy? An increase in Netflix, YouTube traffic will result in a decrease in the amount of bittorrent traffic in terms of percent, even if absolute usage remains the same. Likewise, a decrease in bittorrent traffic will lead to higher percentages for Netflix and YouTube. That doesn't indicate (or rule out) a relationship between the two (i.e. leaving bittorrent behind for Netflix) except in that it is a relative measure.
Hoarders (Score:5, Insightful)
Could more people be satisfied with current video offerings or are less people finding useful things to download via file sharing?
Could be that most download hoarders are finally coming to their senses that out of the 250gigs of MP3s they've downloaded they're really only listening to about 2gigs worth? That's my guess... that and the fact that you can only beat off so many times a year so having 65 days of pr0n doesn't make much sense either.
Or maybe it's people who've gotten sick of downloading 5 gigs worth of an e-book collection for a single book that's about 6 dollars on Amazon.
I know tons of people who've done the bit torrent stockpiling and I've never seen any of them come close to using a double digit percentage of what they've ripped off. It's like the people who get the high end NetFlix package and rip the discs and return them the next day. How many of those discs never get watched? My guess is a ton of them never see the tray of a DVD player.
Amazon Prime Video / Netflix / Hulu - Good Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Now? For less than $25 a month, I have Amazon Prime Videos, Netflix, and Hulu Plus. They provide me with, more or less, all the video content I really want. (and more than I could ever watch)
There are shows and movies that come and go from these services that I'd *like* to have, but there is so much to watch, I can't be bothered to pirate them anymore.
So finally the media companies are offering a legal service that is approaching *good enough* status. It isn't perfect and yes, there are features we don't have yet that can be had with a pirate copy, but at some point it gets close enough that my time is worth more than messing with it. For the cost of 2 movie tickets a month, we have endless things to watch (and not nearly enough time to watch them all, my "to watch list keeps growing").
I currently have DirecTV in my home, cost is about $100 a month. I'm not quite ready to ditch it yet (because of my kids, Disney and Nick are popular in my house), but I see that day coming. The few things that we watch that aren't on Prime/Netflix/Hulu can be purchased by the episode most of the time, sooner or later, cable/satellite will be really pointless.
I'm sure for many, that day has already arrived. More and more each year are likely to cut that cord, just as they did with landlines. I cut my landline in 2005 and never looked back, so will it be with DirecTV at some point.
Not to worry. (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't be long before our fully-purchased representatives finish overturning the last vestiges of Network Neutrality, allowing our Rightful Owners to specify and enforce the proper balance of Internet traffic.
Re:Hoarders (Score:5, Insightful)
They would mail you 3 DVDs, then you would rip them, drop them off at the store the next day and they would give you 3 in store rentals for free in exchange, while at the same time mailing you 3 more.
When it first came out, they didn't wait for the in-store rentals to be returned before mailing the next set of discs. They changed that at some point.
So you could get up to 12 movies a week if you were swapping them every 3 days or so.
After a few months, I had several TB of hard drive space full of movies that... frankly weren't likely to ever be watched.
Then Blu-Ray came out, and the quality there was good enough that it made the ripped copies look like crap. I ended up deleting them. That was a LOT of hours of time wasted.
So yea, the idea that I'll have this huge horde ended up being rather silly. Now I just put the PS3 or Ruku on and stream more content than I will ever have time to watch and life is good.
Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu Plus might not be perfect, they each have their own issues, they don't have "everything", but boy, they sure have enough stuff to keep my family busy most of the time.
Enjoy it while you can (Score:5, Insightful)
Our customers have reported stuttering, loss of signal, blackouts, and insertion of pornographic images and video into their streams. We are doing everything we can to fix this problem. In the meantime you might consider upgrading to Xfinity streaming service, which we guarantee will not be hit by these glitches.
regards,
Comcast
Re:Hoarders (Score:5, Insightful)
When the commercial outlets drop something out of existence you want due to low demand, you will thank the so-called 'hoarders'.
Re:Build it (Score:5, Insightful)
As my boss reminds me: give a 110%. All the percentages must go up!
No, not all. For instance: the percentage of increase for wages - those must go down, India's waiting.
Re:Hoarders (Score:5, Insightful)
As a "hoarder", I've documented my collection pretty well. I never burn anything to DVD's or USB hard drives. Everything is networked and available to all devices.
It's about saving the really classic stuff. The real jewels of my collection are all the Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons. Stuff that is just not available on market today due their outright greed and insane copyright mentality. Some of the collections like M*A*S*H I ripped direct from the DVDs themselves.
The real value of my collection? At some point in the future the stuff I have, while classic, will not be readily available. My collection, nearing triple digit TB's, will be easily duplicated and shared.
My cartoon collection alone is very hard to come by. My younger relatives love to be able to watch Donald Duck and his nephews. Sadly, Disney being the douchenozzles they are have adamantly refused to share those cartoons with today's children.
Re:Hoarders (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hoarders (Score:4, Insightful)
FRAND would be the most sane thing to do.
The most sane thing to do would be to restore the original term for Copyright. Life moves faster now, but copyrights expire slower. That is obviously bullshit.