Broadband Usage Caps

[Cemguy]

What's going to happen to the overall price for SA IPTV (not only payment to SA but to ISP for service) when broadband usage caps go into effect?

I can imagine that, for people who watch a significant number of hours per day, the costs could be prohibitive, especially if IPTV ever goes to 1080p resolution.

 

[kevinbct]

What's going to happen to the overall price for SA IPTV (not only payment to SA but to ISP for service) when broadband usage caps go into effect?

I can imagine that, for people who watch a significant number of hours per day, the costs could be prohibitive, especially if IPTV ever goes to 1080p resolution.

Sky Angel not going to get to HD quality, let alone 1080p anytime soon. To the best of my knowledge 1080p is not a broadcast standard, its only being used by the two satellite companies, DTV and Dish for OnDemand. It's also used in blu-ray DVD and Playstation 3.

I would be surprised if Sky Angel does HDTV anytime in the next 2 to 3 years. To calculate your bandwidth usage, start with about 900 kilobits per second.... Covert that to kilobytes per second. Kilobits and kilobytes ... megabits and megabytes are very different. Most computer users do not know this. You can find a free online calculator by doing a google search.

When I first got SA in March, I calculated that with 3 hours a day of using SA, I would use about 36 GB (gigabytes) of data per month. Someone can double check my math and see if I'm right...

 

[jholland]

Is usage lower for radio channels?

 

[Automate]

Is usage lower for radio channels?

Yes, radio stations only use 128kbps (kilobits per second) according to the SA FAQ

 

[Automate]

I think if your ISP has a usage cap your biggest worry is forgetting to turn off the box so instead of having a few hours a day of usage you have 24 hours a day of usage.

I think SA should add a "watchdog" timer feature that the user could turn on and off. If turned on it would stop playing a TV station if it does not see any buttons on the remote pushed for X number of minutes.

So if the box does not see any channel changes, volume changes, etc. for say 2 hours it assumes you are not watching and changes to the main menu (which does not use much bandwidth).

This would provide benefits for both the customer and SA. For the customer it helps them stay under their cap if they forget to turn off the box. For SA it reduces the amount of bandwidth they have to provide to a customers who is not even watching the TV.

 

[jholland]

So is the bandwidth usage low if you just press the "stop" button, but leave the box on?

 

[Automate]

So is the bandwidth usage low if you just press the "stop" button, but leave the box on?

Yes, all the menu screens are more like typical web pages, they are not streamed like the TV channels so they require minimal bandwidth.