A expansão dos filmes sob demanda na Internet

http://www.netflix.com/Default

Por apenas US$ 7,99/mês, esse serviço permite assistir à vontade filmes e seriados de TV por meio de streaming.

Tenho certeza de que a maioria esmagadora das pessoas que baixam filmes ou seriados estaria disposta a pagar um valor como esse para poder ter acesso a esse tipo de serviço.

Aliás, li faz pouco mais de um mês (não lembro aonde), uma entrevista com um alemão, onde ele falava sobre uma proposta para se liberar, aqui no Brasil, o download de qualquer conteúdo – desde que para uso pessoal -, tendo como contrapartida o pagamento de um valor adicional mensal (relativamente baixo) diretamente aos provedores de acesso à Internet.

Por raq_uel_logged_off

Caro Ninguém,

Só teremos isso quando nossa banda larga for decente.

Para se ter uma idéia o Netflix representa 20% da tráfego da internet nos EUA no horário de pico  de acordo com essa matéria aqui (desculpem mas eu tô com mta preguiça de traduzir):

Netflix Accounts For 20% Of Peak U.S. Internet Bandwidth: Study Sandvine Report Finds Median Monthly Data Usage in North America is 4 GB By Todd Spangler — Multichannel News, 10/20/2010 12:09:52 PM

Netflix represents more than 20% of downstream Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. — and is heaviest in the primetime hours of 8 to 10 p.m., according to a new report from bandwidth management equipment vendor Sandvine.

Overall, Internet users in North America still trail other regions in consumption: North American households use a median of 4 Gigabytes per month of Internet bandwidth, whereas in Asia-Pacific region the median is 12 Gigabytes. According to Sandvine’s 2009 report, the worldwide monthly median usage last year was 3 Gigabytes.

Meanwhile, in North America the average time a fixed connection is active is 3 hours, whereas in Asia-Pacific it’s closer to 5.5 hours.

Sandvine’s eighth annual bandwidth study, “Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena,” was based on data collected from more than 200 cable, DSL and mobile service providers worldwide over August and September 2010.

Netflix, which had about 16.9 million subscribers as of the end of September 2010, provides its “Watch Now” Internet streaming service on more than 100 devices, including TiVo DVRs, Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation3, Nintendo Wii, and many Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray Disc players.

O Techcrunch fez um post semana passada falando sobre a porcentagem de banda utilizada hj para fazer streaming de video:

Web Video Hogs Up 37 Percent Of Internet Traffic During Peak TV Hours Erick Schonfeld Nov 19, 2010

A few weeks ago, some data came out suggesting that Netflix alone accounts for 21 percent of Internet traffic during peak TV hours. But if you add in a couple other sources of streaming video from the Web, namely YouTube and other forms of Flash video, the traffic share of Web video jumps to 37 percent (with 10 percent from YouTube and 6 percent fro Flash video). BitTorrent is another 8 percent, with much of that being video as well.

These startling numbers were put together in a slide by Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker during her presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week. All HTTP web traffic is only 23 percent of the total.

Does this mean that the No. 1 activity on the Web is watching videos? Not exactly. The traffic is measured in terms of bandwidth used and how many bits are transferred. Streaming a video file requires an order of magnitude more bits than loading a Web page. As a result, video is hogging up the bandwidth.

And the longer the video, the more bandwidth it requires. Which perhaps explains why Netflix accounts for twice as much bandwidth usage as YouTube. People are streaming full-length two-hour movies from Netflix, not two-minute video clips. People are still watching a lot more videos and spending more time on YouTube. In October, viewers spent 23.4 billionminutes on YouTube compared to 750 million minutes on Netflix.com, according to comScore. And YouTube attracted 116 million unique visitors versus 20 million for Netflix.

When you see these numbers, just remember that what they are measuring is the traffic load on the Internet in terms of bandwidth consumed, not time spent. Still, if video is eating up more than a third of Internet bandwidth during primetime hours, imagine what it will be if a decent TV experience ever comes to the Web.