TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

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barnabas1969 wrote: Richard, you have a bandwidth cap? I've read that many people in Canada already have caps, but I wasn't aware that anyone in the US had them. The number of people in this country who have "cut the cord" is very few. I believe that if this practice (downloading/streaming content) becomes more popular, then ISP's will begin to have caps for everyone.

What's your limit each month?

ATT also implemented a bandwidth cap on their DSL (at least here in the St. Louis area). Currently I think it's at 150 GB, but my guess is that was a starting point to keep people from complaining too much. I expect that cap to decrease as time goes on - just my personal opinion.

barnabas1969 wrote:Well written, bob_p. I agree, and I hope someone develops a great DVR software package that includes CableCARD support.

Richard, you have a bandwidth cap? I've read that many people in Canada already have caps, but I wasn't aware that anyone in the US had them. The number of people in this country who have "cut the cord" is very few. I believe that if this practice (downloading/streaming content) becomes more popular, then ISP's will begin to have caps for everyone.

What's your limit each month?

Are you kidding? Bandwidth caps are all the rage these days! In fact, Comcast is causing quite a net neutrality uproar over their bandwidth cap (they have a cap, but none of their own content counts toward the cap).

My provider (Cox) has a bandwidth cap that is dependent on the package you pay for:

Starter (1 Mbps down / 256 Kbps up, $29.99/month) = 30 GB/month (Note: When bundled with TV or phone service, price is $25.99/month)
Essential (3 Mbps down / 384 Kbps up, $39.99/month) = 50 GB/month (Note: When bundled with TV or phone service, price is $36.99/month)
Preferred (12 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up, $51.99/month) = 200 GB/month
Premiere (25 Mbps down / 3 Mbps up, $64.99/month) = 250 GB/month
Ultimate (50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up, $99.99/month) = 400 GB/month

And of course, I'm cheap, so I pay for the Starter package. I also pay $70.23 for TV service (that includes my CableCARD), so I'm only paying $25.99 for internet, for a total of $96.22 per month ($100.33 after all the extra taxes/fees).

Neither the Starter tier nor the Essential tier have enough bandwidth allowance to support any decent amount of OTT content. The Ultimate package costs more that I currently pay for both internet and TV. So to cut the cord and go OTT, I would have to choose between the Preferred and Premiere tiers, which gives me about $30-$45 each month to spend on content. There is simply no way I can purchase the amount of non-OTA content I watch for that amount of money.

richard1980 wrote:

barnabas1969 wrote:Well written, bob_p. I agree, and I hope someone develops a great DVR software package that includes CableCARD support.

Richard, you have a bandwidth cap? I've read that many people in Canada already have caps, but I wasn't aware that anyone in the US had them. The number of people in this country who have "cut the cord" is very few. I believe that if this practice (downloading/streaming content) becomes more popular, then ISP's will begin to have caps for everyone.

What's your limit each month?

Are you kidding? Bandwidth caps are all the rage these days! In fact, Comcast is causing quite a net neutrality uproar over their bandwidth cap (they have a cap, but none of their own content counts toward the cap).

My provider (Cox) has a bandwidth cap that is dependent on the package you pay for:

Starter (1 Mbps down / 256 Kbps up, $29.99/month) = 30 GB/month (Note: When bundled with TV or phone service, price is $25.99/month)
Essential (3 Mbps down / 384 Kbps up, $39.99/month) = 50 GB/month (Note: When bundled with TV or phone service, price is $36.99/month)
Preferred (12 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up, $51.99/month) = 200 GB/month
Premiere (25 Mbps down / 3 Mbps up, $64.99/month) = 250 GB/month
Ultimate (50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up, $99.99/month) = 400 GB/month

And of course, I'm cheap, so I pay for the Starter package. I also pay $70.23 for TV service (that includes my CableCARD), so I'm only paying $25.99 for internet, for a total of $96.22 per month ($100.33 after all the extra taxes/fees).

Neither the Starter tier nor the Essential tier have enough bandwidth allowance to support any decent amount of OTT content. The Ultimate package costs more that I currently pay for both internet and TV. So to cut the cord and go OTT, I would have to choose between the Preferred and Premiere tiers, which gives me about $30-$45 each month to spend on content. There is simply no way I can purchase the amount of non-OTA content I watch for that amount of money.

Wow, that's pretty bad! I pay almost $100/month, including the CableCARD. The only premium channels I get are Showtime. My price does not include Internet service. That's paid separately by my employer. It's about $50/month for 10Mbps down, 768K up (real speeds are about 7Mbps down, 650K up). If it was packaged with my TV service, it would be somewhere between $5 and $10 cheaper per month. There are no bandwidth caps... even for residential customers.

I've had Comcast before... and it SUCKED compared to Brighthouse... in every area... channel variety, service calls, price, etc. I've heard that Cox is no better.

how can iptv work in the uk with the current caps? Last time I checked the standard connection was offering a cap around 40GB a month.

HD recording/watching is around 1.5GB an hour, so if an average household watches 4 hours a day, that's potentially 6GB a day, 6GB * 30 days = 180GB per month.
SD recording/watching is around 1GB an hour, so if an average household watches 4 hours a day, that's potentially 4GB a day, 4GB * 30 days = 120GB per month.

...and that is not including internet usage including streaming, video calls, downloading etc etc.

Depends on your ISP, and the package you have with that ISP. For example, the low price offering from both Sky and Talk Talk is capped (2GB! and 40GB respectively) but they also offer pricier unlimited options. Others, like Virgin, my ISP, are unlimited, but throttle download speeds during peak periods. So, if I download more than 5000MB between 4pm-9pm then they half my download speed (to 30Mb) for 5 hours. Even throttled, it would still be quick enough to drive several TVs running HD content.

I considered doing the UK equivalent of cutting the cord, by getting rid of the TV Licence, but the cost saving verses the increased inconvenience wasn't worth it.

i get 37Mb/s and no caps on my lovely Sky broadband. all my programming is delivered by satellite and i don't plan to change that in the future

There is no denying that BT Infinity, which Sky are reselling, is a good product. Be interesting to see if they add caps or throttling once there are serious numbers of customers, but at the moment it is sweet. Shame there is no date for it coming to my local exchange.