Netflix/Hulu customers.

[warhorse78]

Lets say, reading my morning online news, an article on the Time Warner blacking out CBS in LA, NYC and Dallas led to another article on how ISP providers are planning on squeezing out their toughest competition like Netflix and Hulu and other online content by placing an obsurd bandwidth cap on internet customers. I currently have DSL from ATT, and pay only 14 bucks a month and I am always watching entire TV series on either my pc or TV and have yet to see any notice on Bandwidth exceeded.

Have any of you seen any problems with ISP providers and the usage of online video content? Is this something we should be worried about if it's implemented on a wide scale? So far, I have heard only LA has been hit with this nonsense, but I live all the way in South Florida, and so far it has yet to effect my viewing area.

 

[KevanG]

Aren't you not allowed to use any of them there fancy electronica gadgets there?

 

[Teelie]

ISP's cannot legally do that. If they do it's anti-competitive and would lead to a lawsuit, not to mention the public outrage and bad publicity it would generate. The thing with CBS and Time Warner is one thing, a contract dispute that will eventually settle but it's already given both companies a worse image in the public's eye and most likely will result in outside intervention if it goes on too long. There is another thing that's recently come up where ISP's dispute who pays what to who with regards to data transfer but it's not the same thing as blocking out or capping data from those specific companies. That's throttling data and I think it should be more carefully monitored if not illegal to degrade your competition's data like that.

The very idea of these data caps is absurd though when they claim almost no one goes near them yet they still feel a need to institute them. If not many people come close to the data cap, why have one at all?

 

[Siby]

I live in Pa and have cable. I fight with my cable company all the time because of my connection speed or bandwidth usage per month.

My cable company has threatened to terminate my service on several occasions because of my "excessive usage" but I'm below the cap (250 gig/month). They say it's because I use it more than everybody else on the network. I've told them that I pay for the usage and if the other people aren't using it then me using the network isn't impacting them anyway so I don't see the problem.

I don't download music or movies or any of that stuff. My kids watch Netflix, play online games, and we use Skype occasionally. I get so frustrated with their nonsense and wish there was a better option.

 

[Teelie]

You (or rather your kids) watch Netflix which is the major thorn in the side of most ISP's who throw around data cap requirements as it's overtaken even Bit Torrent in the bandwidth usage.

The truth is they don't like the competition so they make up ******** to justify all kinds of dodgy means to avoid being called on their throttling. They have the bandwidth just not the inclination to properly allocate it and instead will charge you more money for usage.

 

[bullets]

I get sent overage notifications , but I'm never billed extra. If they start putting a cap on my data usage I'll switch to a different provider.


Also I started using Netflix streaming this month because it's a feature on my blu ray player. I wish they had a master list of titles that are expiring soon because I've been searching the entire catalog to make sure I don't miss out on anything.

 

[KevanG]

They've had fairly small caps in eastern Canada for quite some time now. When I did work for Bell that was the main reason for people canceling, that and them being idiots.

 

[Tanin]

I have TWC and they have no cap. They tried it and it failed and they reverted.

 

[ImWithTeamConan]

I get sent overage notifications , but I'm never billed extra. If they start putting a cap on my data usage I'll switch to a different provider.


Also I started using Netflix streaming this month because it's a feature on my blu ray player. I wish they had a master list of titles that are expiring soon because I've been searching the entire catalog to make sure I don't miss out on anything.

I usually go to Instant Watcher to see what's coming up that's new or being removed.

 

[bullets]

I usually go to Instant Watcher to see what's coming up that's new or being removed.

That seems to be the go-to site. I've also discovered http://whatsonnetflixnow.blogspot.com/ which is somewhat helpful.

 

[warhorse78]

I get sent overage notifications , but I'm never billed extra. If they start putting a cap on my data usage I'll switch to a different provider.


Also I started using Netflix streaming this month because it's a feature on my blu ray player. I wish they had a master list of titles that are expiring soon because I've been searching the entire catalog to make sure I don't miss out on anything.

That's what got me into netflix, i bought a blue ray that also came with 3 months free of netflix. I became hooked when I realized I can watch TV series on there, including The X files, which I thought was a better bargain than going out and buying all of the series on DVD. And it's nice to also catch a few of the movies.