4 ms·

I recommend also reading the comment/discussion from Mark Cuban at the bottom of the article. Here is the initial comment: "Come on fred. Cable companies star

by guiomie 12y ago

I recommend also reading the comment/discussion from Mark Cuban at the bottom of the article. Here is the initial comment: "Come on fred. Cable companies started as analog. They were held back from going digital more quickly because people still watch TV and they had to support old stb. It wasn't a binary go all in for digital or not And as far as 1k channels are you saying more linear is better than the thousands of hours of HD on demand content they offer to tv viewers ? Or for the remote dvrs coming online ? Consumption of on demand and dvr viewing is growing faster than internet viewing of long firm content. Or did you not notice that side of the equation. People do watch far more digital tv than they do internet video. By a long shot And you seem to forget that the internet was designed for everything but video. But that's a topic for another time. If you want to discuss the openness of the net you have to take out netflix. That's one company the discussion of the open internet can't be built around one company (disclosure I own a lot oc nflx stock and do quite a bit of business with )"

jacquesm 12y ago
> And you seem to forget that the internet was designed for everything but video. I've had that one leveled at me on more than one occasion (including a very irate backbone operator that was pissed off that my webcam software was about to saturate the transatlantic link) but I really do not agree with that. The internet was designed to transport bits, to do so connectionless (UDP/IP, Multicast/IP) or using virtual circuits. What the content of those bits was was no doubt important but it is not exactly as if the internet was designed to the exclusion of one particular medium because it happens to produce a lot of bits. Talk about videoconferencing started in the 1930's, and in via the internet in the 1970's (roughly around the time the internet was built). I highly doubt that you could make a credible claim that streaming video across the world digitally was the one application that the internet was not designed for. The whole idea is that it transports bits, and that it does so with maximum speed and reliability routing around problems where those are encountered. What those bits represent is an affair of the sender and the receiver.
- angersock 12y ago
  Yep. That was the line that annoyed me the most, other than the continued dismissal of concerns about ISP behavior--it's pretty obvious at this point to anybody in tech that they can't be assumed to be competent and unbiased actors.
- noblethrasher 12y ago
  He's probably making the common mistake of confusing the Web with the Internet.
- Ologn 12y ago
  It also neglects that efforts to alleviate the video broadcasting problem back before the commercial Internet really took off ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone ) were held back by carriers.
narrowrail 12y ago
Wow. These arguments seem absurd. The retiring baby boomers are watching tons of TV now (more free time), and the internet mostly confuses them (my parents and their friends). The cable companies and media companies are happy to oblige people's resistance to change, and the technology to enable simple consumption of video via IP has not been allowed to flourish (see the lawsuit of streaming OTA signals; which is even more bandwidth traditional media takes up). Roku is about the best a non-technical person could hope for, and there is lots of room for improvement there, esp. around live content consumption (e.g. sports).
- nemothekid 12y ago
  The poster left out the second half of the argument which had a really good point - the main point being despite the whole net neutrality debate being relatively old, ISP's response to Netflix, YouTube, and Twitch have been to invest & build rather than create fast lanes (which have been feared since before the time of Netflix). That said, given the history of this issue it might be a bad idea to make classify internet access as title II because they problems we believe are going to happen, just haven't happened yet.
  - narrowrail 12y ago
    I actually don't care for the idea of giving the government or a for-profit duopoly any more power. I'm not sure if the solution entails member-owned co-ops, employee-owned co-ops, or what. In view of current trends (as I see them), something needs to change. The two options purposed don't seem like they're the only possible ones.

by guiomie 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

> And you seem to forget that the internet was designed for everything but video. I've had that one leveled at me on more than one occasion (including a very irate backbone operator that was pissed off that my webcam software was about to saturate the transatlantic link) but I really do not agree with that. The internet was designed to transport bits, to do so connectionless (UDP/IP, Multicast/IP) or using virtual circuits. What the content of those bits was was no doubt important but it is not exactly as if the internet was designed to the exclusion of one particular medium because it happens to produce a lot of bits. Talk about videoconferencing started in the 1930's, and in via the internet in the 1970's (roughly around the time the internet was built). I highly doubt that you could make a credible claim that streaming video across the world digitally was the one application that the internet was not designed for. The whole idea is that it transports bits, and that it does so with maximum speed and reliability routing around problems where those are encountered. What those bits represent is an affair of the sender and the receiver.

angersock 12y ago
Yep. That was the line that annoyed me the most, other than the continued dismissal of concerns about ISP behavior--it's pretty obvious at this point to anybody in tech that they can't be assumed to be competent and unbiased actors.
noblethrasher 12y ago
He's probably making the common mistake of confusing the Web with the Internet.
Ologn 12y ago
It also neglects that efforts to alleviate the video broadcasting problem back before the commercial Internet really took off ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone ) were held back by carriers.

narrowrail 12y ago

Wow. These arguments seem absurd. The retiring baby boomers are watching tons of TV now (more free time), and the internet mostly confuses them (my parents and their friends). The cable companies and media companies are happy to oblige people's resistance to change, and the technology to enable simple consumption of video via IP has not been allowed to flourish (see the lawsuit of streaming OTA signals; which is even more bandwidth traditional media takes up). Roku is about the best a non-technical person could hope for, and there is lots of room for improvement there, esp. around live content consumption (e.g. sports).

nemothekid 12y ago
The poster left out the second half of the argument which had a really good point - the main point being despite the whole net neutrality debate being relatively old, ISP's response to Netflix, YouTube, and Twitch have been to invest & build rather than create fast lanes (which have been feared since before the time of Netflix). That said, given the history of this issue it might be a bad idea to make classify internet access as title II because they problems we believe are going to happen, just haven't happened yet.
- narrowrail 12y ago
  I actually don't care for the idea of giving the government or a for-profit duopoly any more power. I'm not sure if the solution entails member-owned co-ops, employee-owned co-ops, or what. In view of current trends (as I see them), something needs to change. The two options purposed don't seem like they're the only possible ones.