Proposed Standard Would Address Video Buffering 118
Lucas123 writes "Sony, SanDisk and several other technology providers have formed a group and proposed a standard that would use predictive software to pre-load content onto mobile devices in order to preempt buffering issues due to bandwidth bottlenecks, which industry experts say will only worsen over time. 'Intelligently coordinating content delivery in advance to local device storage lets consumers enjoy their video, games, periodicals, books and music when they're ready,' said Susan Kevorkian, a research director at IDC. The proposed standard also raises the question: do we really want Amazon downloading everything it thinks you want to your tablet?"
Intelligent delivery in advance lets consumers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sony? Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have a seat over there (Score:5, Insightful)
do we really want Amazon downloading everything it thinks you want to your tablet?"
It's all fun and games until you visit 4chan and get something preloaded you don't want.
Re:Download Accelerator!!! HD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually some of those download accellerators were pretty clever. They downloaded the HTML for all the sites that a site linked to. So for instance while I'm reading a story on the NYT all of the linked stories start downloading. It isn't perpetual motion, it's just anticipation.
Similarly if Netflix wanted to start downloading all of the episodes to a Miniseries that I start watching while I sleep so that I can watch them in HD even with a slower connection... all the more power to them.
In fact my two 2TB HDDs are mostly unused. If they want to download all of my recommended Netflix movies but dynamically delete them when I need more space.. again all the more power to them if it doesn't interfere with my normal browsing.
There is a lot of time while I'm at work where my internet connection could be going full tilt caching my potential entertainment. In fact it doesn't even have to cache all of it--just enough so that there is no buffering.
Re:Sony? Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost and availability of bandwidth varies extremely much depending on where you are and by what way you're connected. I recently bought Fifa 11 for my iPhone (1$ sale on valentine's day, massive bang for the buck) and it was 800 MB+, way more than my 500 MB/month quota. There is an unlimited plan but it costs hellishly much and the phone doesn't let you download apps over 20 MB via 3G anyway. Was that a problem? No, because i downloaded it over my wifi which is hooked up to a 25 Mbit line with no quota.
While it is in range of my wifi, I wouldn't mind if it loaded up on content I'd want to watch. I just don't think there's any automated system intelligent enough - or rather clairvoyant enough - to actually be useful. I could see it for stuff I was subscribed to, like "When there's a new episode of the Simpsons and I'm on wifi then automatically predownload" sort of thing but not in general. That is, if such a service existed.