It seems the daily struggle a writer has when in tune with the blogosphere is that most posts end up being Internet based. Or more concisely the Internet or lack thereof in South Africa, is at the heart of the story.
Today is no different. I recently got put on the Joost beta service. For those who don’t know, well it is an online TV service that was set up in the US. Unfortunately, to experience the service to the max, it is not the speeds that hinder the process but more importantly the cap. Aaron Keogh, director of technology of Matrixstream in Canada, reckons that to run a decent online TV service one needs a speed of 384 kilobits per second, in other words 48 kilobytes per second.
Let’s do the maths. An average Internet cap is 3 Gigabytes, which in turn is 3000 Megabytes, which makes 3 million Kilobytes. 48 goes into 3 million 62 500 times. So 62 500 seconds is 1041 minutes, which in hours is 17 hours of viewing time (Thanks to Google for doing the sums). So if I am a sporting enthusiast I get to watch about 9 games of soccer. Now this is if I don’t use my Internet connection for anything else.
Some might argue that it isn’t too bad but couple that with the browsing habits of an Internet fundi, which is about 3 gigabytes a week, then the game time on Joost will be a bit limited.
I guess my Joost beta will be like the good old days, a whole lot of window shopping but not a lot of enjoyment. But then again, where there is a will there is a way, it just might cost a lot as the going rate for an extra Gigabyte is about R70.
Today is no different. I recently got put on the Joost beta service. For those who don’t know, well it is an online TV service that was set up in the US. Unfortunately, to experience the service to the max, it is not the speeds that hinder the process but more importantly the cap. Aaron Keogh, director of technology of Matrixstream in Canada, reckons that to run a decent online TV service one needs a speed of 384 kilobits per second, in other words 48 kilobytes per second.
Let’s do the maths. An average Internet cap is 3 Gigabytes, which in turn is 3000 Megabytes, which makes 3 million Kilobytes. 48 goes into 3 million 62 500 times. So 62 500 seconds is 1041 minutes, which in hours is 17 hours of viewing time (Thanks to Google for doing the sums). So if I am a sporting enthusiast I get to watch about 9 games of soccer. Now this is if I don’t use my Internet connection for anything else.
Some might argue that it isn’t too bad but couple that with the browsing habits of an Internet fundi, which is about 3 gigabytes a week, then the game time on Joost will be a bit limited.
I guess my Joost beta will be like the good old days, a whole lot of window shopping but not a lot of enjoyment. But then again, where there is a will there is a way, it just might cost a lot as the going rate for an extra Gigabyte is about R70.
No comments:
Post a Comment