Posted on 07/30/2014 4:27:45 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
ideo streaming service Netflix has agreed to pay U.S. broadband provider AT&T Inc to ensure smooth delivery of Netflix content to Internet users, the companies said on Tuesday.
The announcement of the deal, struck in May, comes as Netflix has been waging a public campaign against such fees, which they present as tolls, and calling on the Federal Communications Commission to review the market.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I pay Verizon for my 75MBit internet connection and I still get screen stalls when I watch Netflix, Hulu-Plus or a movie rental from Amazon. It especially irks me when I shell out $6 or $7 for a premium film only to have it stall and buffer 15 or 20 times during viewing.
Sure is, and this is just the opening salvo. This is going to get MUCH worse. Your price to use NetFlix is about to skyrocket.
> It especially irks me when I shell out $6 or $7 for a
> premium film only to have it stall and buffer 15 or 20
> times during viewing.
Still better than commercials.
That's part of your problem.
All jokes aside, this is what happens when the Feds disallow net neutrality. You're shelling out money every month for an Internet connection but you're not buying "premium" connectivity "rights." The government has just allowed providers to request more money for premium access. Your NetFlix isn't going to get any better. If anything, it'll get worse, and Verizon will start spamming your Inbox with emails saying, "Buy now to get premium access to NetFlix and other streaming providers!"
Netflix viewed via Chromecast does much better than streaming direct from my Roku
Netflix has been annoying me lately with the lack of good stuff.
Like I was watching How Its Made and suddenly every season but one vanishes.
Stupid gets what stupid deserves. People were warned. Telecoms like Verizon and ATT are close to criminal and have a history of shady business practices. They are greed heads and want more money and will do anything to achieve it. Heir goal is to control the supply of internet by not building their networks out. As long as bandwidth is limited, they can charge more and invent these ridiculous toll schemes.
Soon we will be back to pay by the hour internet. It’s getting close with these artificial bandwidth limits. Stifle innovation to maintain a monopoly. It worked with telephones for decades. The internet is merely another thing to be controlled and exploited. It needs to be open and neutral but some just don’t see the full picture. Never trust the telecoms of service providers.
How do you get Netflix from the computer to the TV?
I can watch movies free on my computer, but the TV would be better for viewing.
One thing is certain: net neutrality is a government-branded term, like 'The Affordable Care Act'. Simplified explanations sound good, but there's much to be disturbed about under the hood.
Do some research and learn about the incestuous relationships between lobbyists, the FCC and cable companies/ISPs, especially Comcast. Current FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler was a lobbyist for the cable industry and raised over half a million for Obama's campaigns. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me that he's looking out for my best interests...
No matter which way the net neutrality door swings, it will have both intended and unintended negative consequences that heavily impact us, the customers. As usual, we're the last ones to be considered and the ones who will have to foot the bill.
I don’t think this is about the price of Netflix or at least not much. Netflix probably got a sweet deal.
This has more to do with ISP getting a chunk of Google, Amazon and everybody else making money on the internet. The best analogy I can think of is the Feds using tax money to build a highway for everybody to use, then turning it into a toll road.
Netflix is paying the toll. Now that the precedence is set, they are going to be hitting everybody else they see making a profit.
And just so everybody can share the pain, after making all the content providers pay for special consideration of their access to bandwidth, they are going to cap the consumer’s account so they don’t abuse the privilege of receiving this content.
It’s absolutely about the price of Netflix. If Netflix pays their provider for a larger pipe or for premium inbound network bandwidth, who do you think will pay that bill?
There is a device that costs $35 from Walmart, called google Chrome cast. It casts everything on the google browser to the TV. ie Free Republic, You tube, Netflix, Hulu etc. Also programs available on the web....... all CBS programming for instance.
You find Netflix on google chrome browser and punch the Chrome Cast tab and the TV set to receive Chrome Cast input has the programming on the computer screen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_cast
With the bonus benefit of letting Google know exactly what you've been watching!
I'm supposed to have the highest tier internet service from Comcast and my Netflix always cuts out.
Geeze! It's like we are in a 1930's mob movie with the goons offering "protection" now? "Hey, you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to family movie night, would ya, pal"?
I have used three methods for getting video from my computer to the TV.
Roku. It will directly stream much of the content plus you can stream video directly from network storage. Great for viewing the thousands of channels that are directly available. A pain for streaming from the network.
Chromecast. It will directly stream a handful of content channels, much less than the Roku, but on the upside will mirror a Chrome web window directly to the TV. Anything you can play on a web screen, you can play on the TV. The downside is there is some loss of video quality and occasionally there is a glitch and streaming stops.
HDMI cable. My wife’s least favorite as it involves a cord from my computer to the TV. Your TV becomes your computer screen. It just works.
You could get a Chromecast or similar device which reads signals from your computer to the TV. Or devices specifically for Netflix/Hulu/etc (like Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV) - just to name a few - there are many more now. The newer game systems also include the apps (from the last gen Playstations and Xbox and forward). And the new “smart TV’s” have the apps built in as well. Many different ways to get it to the TV.
That's the truth about what will happen.
At the beginning of the net neutrality debate, it seemed as if the ISPs were just trying to squeeze more revenue out of their customers, despite giving them graded service by speed. However, I've heard that at primetime, up to 1/3 of the traffic is generated by Netflix. If that's true, they are taking advantage of the infrastructure provided by the ISPs.
The situation is reminiscent of the 90's, which ended in a humongous telecom crash. In the Telecommunications Act of 1994, the government mandated that central exchange phone companies had to give access to their switching fabric to what were called "co-located exchange operators", or CLECs. The CLECs used this access to provide a variety of novel and often cutrate services, which they could do, because they were piggybacking on the expenditures of the main telephone companies.
So, what happened? Cisco sold a lot of routers, IPOs were done, stocks rode high for a while, and eventually the whole mess crashed.
This is similar, in that once a huge content vendor like NFLX arises, it takes advantage of the existing infrastructure. Great deal for the consumer... for a while.
Eventually, you get pushback, and ultimately, the ISPs will be more than compensated. Probably, big content providers like Netflix will strike a deal on the supply side (for which the Netflix customer will pay), and high-speed users will pay an additional quality of service fee for packet priority.
Read my reply.
I’m betting this is more about Google and the other major players paying the vig than your monthly Netflix bill.
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