One hour movie? No chance

Posted byLance Wiggs 9 Comments on One hour movie? No chance


One hour move? No chance, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs.


A 2GB HD movie from iTunes is about 1 hour long, but it takes over well over 4 hours to download.

There’s not much use getting angry, but this is typical of me on ADSL plans.

It’s a simple rule really – the movie should at least download at a faster rate tan you can watch it.

So I for one will be listening with great interest when the UFB plays out this week.

Published by Lance Wiggs

@lancewiggs

9 replies on “One hour movie? No chance”

  1. Sadly, iTunes does HD movies (and tv shows) as HD + SD, so you get both, and have to download both.

    They never put a switch in to say “Only get me the HD one please”. Which kinda sucks.

    In the UK, I can usually get a movie down (SD) in less time than it takes to watch it, but not always. Our new flat isn’t too bad (5meg/1meg DSL), but the old place in Canary Wharf was _shocking_ – 2meg/0.5meg, and 0.5/0.5 at peak times.

    There again, internet is cheap here – from GBP 3.50/month to 12 GBP for most “unlimited*****” plans (which are not), up to 30 or so for an actually unlimited one. It’s not surprise than a good service can’t be done for 3.50.

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  2. Is it downloading from NZ or the US or Oz? Apple really has no excuse not to host them in NZ if they aren’t already, so that people can download them faster, and not have to worry about international traffic.

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    1. I doubt that it is economic for Apple to host the movies here. After all we aren’t a nation of fanboys. We like cheap thing which mean windose for most folks

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  3. I would not hold out too much for UFB. I fully expect that it will all look good early on but that plans will become more expensive, over time, compared to what is available elsewhere. After all what is the point of innovating if someone hands you a 10 year screw-the -public-as-much-as-you-want card?

    We will end up with 50Mbps Internet when other countries switch to some new technology in 4 years time that offers 10 times that speed. We will then end up being unable to partake of the new market that requires the 10x speed since we don’t have the infrastructure for it because some idiots that know f**k all about technology thought a 10 year long screw-the-public-as-much-as-you-want concession was a good idea and would encourage innovation.

    By then a 1 hr movie with be 20GB in size and you will still be downloading slower than you can watch it!

    Of course, I could be wrong.

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  5. Rob, Apple uses Akamai and hosts content in New Zealand.

    Having said that, if you are the first person to download the content it will come from the US. Subsequent customers will be lucky and get from the local cache.

    Also if you are not using your ISP DNS (Google DNS, OpenDNS or anything else) you will not benefit from the local Akamai cache.

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      1. It won’t matter. I do the same. But if you are the first one to download this content then you are out of luck.

        For example we know we are the first to rent a movie when it takes more than 20 minutes to download…

        Again, in New Zealand it’s important you use the local DNS provided by your ISP. This will help when your computer does a DNS lookup and finds the local Akamai servers instead of one somewhere else…

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  6. As for the original post: cable modem and UFB FTW! I’m using TelstraClear and I have a 100Mbps connection at home. We can usually download a SD movie from iTunes in about three to four minutes…

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