Who cares, it's a rough guesstimate, and it does for the purposes for which it was calculated.
That's a bit like saying "my car is big enough" even though you don't know what you're going to transport. You can only be satisfied with your estimate if you assume the overhead is negliable. My point exactly: neither your nor I know what the packet overhead to payload ratio is, not even as a ballpark figure.
Even though your assumption might well be correct, I am still curious if anybody can provide guideance regarding the overhead ratio.
I can download a gigabyte in a day without even trying hard. A single ISO CD image (e.g., a new Linux release) can top 700MB. On a 1Mbps link, you can download that 700MB in under two hours. And a Linux release typically fills several CDs.
A single high-quality (128Kbps) audio stream will exhaust your 1GB in a bit over 18 hours. Want to listen to Virgin all day? Better buy a radio.
Or look at it this way: 1GB is 8Gb, which works out to 97Kbps. You're buying one megabit per second, but you're only allowed to use some 9.5% of that. Some deal.
The limit for the 2Mbps service is 45GB a month, meaning you get 7% of what you pay for. Even better.
The currently problem with HC is that they are madly trying to expand their customer base. They are also toying with the service every step of the way.
For example you can now get 512KB service for £27.50 a month (13.75 for first 3 months). The offer on the 1Mb service is £17.50/month! Great for new customers but I would rather see them offer discounts to existing customers too
Broadcast channels are being piped down to customers is the format HC receive them. So Channel 5 progs are often in widescreen format! There is a setting on the new HC box for widescreen. No one in customer service has been able to shed light on this yet. The downside are the movies which are all in 4:3 it seems although some can be zoomed in if it is cinemascope format (i.e. bands top & bottom). Bit mix & match.
I've got 16:9 now but it's not perfect. The picture seems to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 on a per-channel (not per-programme) basis. For example, HomeChoice always gives me ITV in 16:9 (with visible stretching) even when ITV are running a programme that should be 4:3 (confirmed by checking analogue and digital terrestrial broadcasts). I can get around this by manually switching my television to 4:3 mode, but it's an ongoing annoyance.
I'm less than delighted with the picture quality. It's tolerable, but noticeably inferior to digital terrestrial. This should improve (possibly dramatically) when they make thier mooted switch to MPEG-4, reportedly later this year.
"What the f* are you doing," inquires our colleague Brush Master, "if 1GB/day (or 45GB/month) are a significant complaint?" Here's an example: I signed up for Napster over the weekend and had downloaded 2GB of (entirely legal) music before I even realised it. "Get a life", you say? "Bite me," I reply. For a service that supposedly represents the new era of digital convergence, 1GB per day is a joke.
You must have one hell of a connection that enables you downloading 2GB before you even realized it. We're all jealous.
But seriously - we can moan about traffic limitations as much as we like; I believe we need to live with it. I expect all signifficant providers to introduce usage limitations unless you pay through the nose. It's just not manageable otherwise.
I have the HomeChoice 2Mbps service. I downloaded that amount of music over the course of an evening.
The universal use of bandwidth caps is far from inevitable. As some major players introduce them (hello, BT) other ten-ton gorillas build their marketing around the lack of them (I never thought I'd say this, but kudos, AOL). Saying "it's just not manageable" without limits is nonsense. If the largest ISP in existence (AOL) can pull it off, I'd hardly say it's unmanageable.
At these levels, bandwidth is flat rate. ISPs do not pay per gigabyte transferred; they pay by the megabit or gigabit per second. If an ISP have, say, a 1Gbps connection with a peer, they will pay the same whether they use 5% or 95% of it.
BT say that 3-5% of their broadband customers are the sort of "bandwidth hogs" targeted by their new limits. It's a safe bet that the overall average bandwidth use is far below their cap levels (15GB/month for 512Kbps users). The point of these limits is not to save money today; it's to prevent the ISPs from having to upgrade their outbound connections to something larger and more expensive. It's a misguided attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Bandwidth use will rise, and it will rise dramatically. Today we're starting to see the launch in the UK of commercial music services like Napster and Rhapsody based on "all you can eat" flat rate subscription models. I pity he who subscribes to Napster and tries to listen to much 128Kbps streaming music with a 5GB per month limit. (That's 91 hours of music per month, if you're curious. I don't know about you, but 3 hours of music per day is not a lot for me.) Tomorrow or the day after we'll see movie download services like Movielink. We're entering an era of copious, cheap digital content streaming down your broadband connection, and miserly download caps simply aren't going to cut it. ISPs will either have to upgrade their connectivity to meet the demand or create a lot of pissed-off customers looking to jump ship to AOL as soon as their contracts expire.
Incidentally: HomeChoice's bandwidth cap for their newly-announced 512Kbps service is a wonderfully ludicrous 5GB per month - that's three times stingier even than the Kings of Stingy, BT! If that sort of bandwidth package were being sold professionally it wouldn't be called 512Kbps. It would be called 16KBps, bursting to 512Kbps.
That's 91 hours of music per month, if you're curious. I don't know about you, but 3 hours of music per day is not a lot for me.
Actually, most people probably don't spend three hours per day listening to their computer. Music, yes; radio, yes; TV, yes: iPod, yes; computer, doubt it.
The bandwidth limit only applies to broadband internet, doesn't it? I'm assuming you can watch as much TV as you like, and only have to pay extra for films.
One thing I'm still not sure about is the extent of the free (i.e. included in the subscription) TV on demand. The web site says there are programmes from BBC One and Channel 4. So which programmes are available?
I believe the bandwidth limitations are far less severe as you describe. 1GB/day lets you download a lot of software (approximately 1 CD full of stuff), and the TV/VoD service does not add to the bandwidth limitation.
For the adverage standard user not intending to download a ripped DVD per day or sucking all of Napster within 24 hours, the 512kbps service is probably more than sufficient.
[Edit: Oops - 512kbps is 5GB/month. Not good enough. 1MB service is 1 GB/day, which is good enough for most. I just confused the two... ]
I think the TVOD prgrammes are basically the Top 20 you'd expect. There's a list somewhere on that second-rate site! [Those quoted on-site are the previous 7 days' EastEnders, Derren Brown, Holby City, Hollyoaks, and Casualty. One subscriber has quoted others elsewhere - basically predictable.]
Does the 5GB monthly cap also apply to internet only? Or to total traffic across the line i.e. including VOD, which is included in the basic price? [Sorry - silly question: of course it applies to internet only.]
Many thanks for the assistance, guys. I'll post further if I encounter serious problems.
The service looks crap.And it is even more restricted than cable operators like ntl and telewest.The whole of SE is cold Turkey .Stick with Sky mate.More choice.
- I'd say the picture quality is OK compared to analogue, yes. It's definitely not as good as DVB-T.
- The bandwidth limits won't be a problem for most people right now. But I'd think twice before signing up for the 512Kbps service, as 5GB/month is very low compared to other ISPs.
- 12 months is, as you say, a long time - but HomeChoice does represent an excellent value if you take into account the combination of broadband plus digital television.
- HomeChoice uses standard ADSL, just like that from any other ISP. It will not cause problems with ordinary voice phone usage.
- The bandwidth limits do indeed only affect broadband service, not television.
- The video-on-demand library is not very deep. "Top 20" is a fair description of the BBC and Channel 4 replay services. If you're really interested, I can make a list of the replay programmes at home tonight. The movie selection is better.
- I would agree that I am "generally satisfied" but not thrilled with the service. Thrilled would require picture quality matching what I get from Freeview, correct switching betwen 16:9 and 4:3, and of course the abolition of those godforsaken bandwidth limits.
- The video-on-demand library is not very deep. "Top 20" is a fair description of the BBC and Channel 4 replay services. If you're really interested, I can make a list of the replay programmes at home tonight.
That would be great if you have time. Or is there a proper list on the web site? The bit I've seen is very vague.
Here are the current contents of the "replay" services. These are the programmes that HomeChoice keep available on-demand for one week after they're originally aired. This is not the regular video-on-demand library, which consists of older material and is rather larger.
BBC One: Silent Witness (2 episodes), Top of the Pops, Holby City, EastEnders (4)
BBC Two: Wimbledon highlights (5)
Channel Four: Bo Selecta, Derren Brown, No Going Back, Hollyoaks (7)
Thanks for the info. Not exactly a big selection - I had hoped it would mean the end of fiddling about with my useless old video recorder, but it looks like buying a new VCR would be a better plan.
I've recently had HomeChoice installed and so far am impressed. Picture quality seems to vary between channels. The main terrestrial channels, the music channels and all VOD services have a picture quality roughly equal to Freeview, but the quality on some other channels, especially UKTV Gold, leaves a little to be desired. Still acceptable though.
The STB is tiny (about the same size as a VHS case) and feels very nice. It's also very responsive and the interface good. Certainly better than any cable or Sky box at the moment. Nice metal remote with plastic (rather than rubber) buttons too, though I can't get it to work my Thomson TV.
The VOD library is pleasingly large, with a wide varieety of programming which I am told is updated monthly. And I've found that despite the inclusion of MTV and VH1 etc, I haven't watched them. Why would I when the V:Mx service is ad (and screen clutter/DOG free!) and I can skip songs that I don't like?
Exploring all corners of the service seems to keep revealing yet more stuff, for example Disney Treasures has a selection of free films.
The internet service seems very speedy too. Initially I had the well known DHCP lease time issue with my wireless router, but that seems to have sorted itself out now. Upload times are good and the webspace quick.
I've also been impressed so far with the quality of customer service, always getting straight through to someone on the 0845 number. Hopefully this will continue rather than due to them having a relatively small number of customers at the moment. The installer was also very professional, certainly more so than the Sky and ntl ones I have experienced. Surprisingly included in the box with the STB was a 2-way mains plug adaptor! So now I have yet another one of those, and yet another ethernet cable. The scart lead supplies seems to be thick and good quality. Also a nice touch is that the user guide book and installation CD are presented in a HomeChoice tin. With thouches like this I wonder if this company is burning money too fast?
So far I'm very pleased with the service, not least because I can only get analogue cable and no Sky. My wish list:
- A bigger range of UK comedy, and more series available at once (for example at the moment of Red Dwarf only one series is available)
- Surprising omissions of artists and songs from V:Mx fixed
- Better picture and sound quality on certain channels (to be fixed later this year with MPEG4)
- More information about forthcoming on-demand programmes (currently only provided for the kids programmes on Scamp)
"The internet service seems very speedy too. Initially I had the well known DHCP lease time issue with my wireless router, but that seems to have sorted itself out now. Upload times are good and the webspace quick."
Could you let me know what this was? I am having HC install this morning and have a Linksys Wireless router
"The internet service seems very speedy too. Initially I had the well known DHCP lease time issue with my wireless router, but that seems to have sorted itself out now. Upload times are good and the webspace quick."
Could you let me know what this was? I am having HC install this morning and have a Linksys Wireless router
Reading adslguide.org.uk suggests that the DHCP lease time HomeChoice uses is very short, maybe 1-5 minutes. This means that a connection not doing anything much will lose its IP and get another one assigned. Computers connected directly to the box seem to cope OK, but some routers get confused and revert to an internal IP, which means your connection gets interrupted. I'm using a Linksys too, and setting the DHCP lease time on it to something under 5 seems to fix it. I also updated to the latest firmware.
Zapomatic, thanks for the most comprehensive user report yet. Most helpful.
Regarding the UK Gold image quality, note that some material shown there is fairly old and not in state-of-the-art image quality to start with. Or they operate on cheap equipment; basically NTL digital cable also shows UK Gold and others with signifficant less image quality compared to BBC1,2,4.
Comments
Who cares, it's a rough guesstimate, and it does for the purposes for which it was calculated.
That's a bit like saying "my car is big enough" even though you don't know what you're going to transport. You can only be satisfied with your estimate if you assume the overhead is negliable. My point exactly: neither your nor I know what the packet overhead to payload ratio is, not even as a ballpark figure.
Even though your assumption might well be correct, I am still curious if anybody can provide guideance regarding the overhead ratio.
No it's not!
Anyway, Homechoice looks excellent, and pretty good value for money, considering the combined cost of some internet and tv packages around today.
I just wish it was available outside London!
I can download a gigabyte in a day without even trying hard. A single ISO CD image (e.g., a new Linux release) can top 700MB. On a 1Mbps link, you can download that 700MB in under two hours. And a Linux release typically fills several CDs.
A single high-quality (128Kbps) audio stream will exhaust your 1GB in a bit over 18 hours. Want to listen to Virgin all day? Better buy a radio.
Or look at it this way: 1GB is 8Gb, which works out to 97Kbps. You're buying one megabit per second, but you're only allowed to use some 9.5% of that. Some deal.
The limit for the 2Mbps service is 45GB a month, meaning you get 7% of what you pay for. Even better.
Interesting thought.
For example you can now get 512KB service for £27.50 a month (13.75 for first 3 months). The offer on the 1Mb service is £17.50/month! Great for new customers but I would rather see them offer discounts to existing customers too
Broadcast channels are being piped down to customers is the format HC receive them. So Channel 5 progs are often in widescreen format! There is a setting on the new HC box for widescreen. No one in customer service has been able to shed light on this yet. The downside are the movies which are all in 4:3 it seems although some can be zoomed in if it is cinemascope format (i.e. bands top & bottom). Bit mix & match.
Can anyone shed more light on this?
Your point might hold up, if you tell me exactly WHERE do you get a 128k Virgin Stream!!
I've yet to find a uk broadcast station above 64k..
I've got 16:9 now but it's not perfect. The picture seems to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 on a per-channel (not per-programme) basis. For example, HomeChoice always gives me ITV in 16:9 (with visible stretching) even when ITV are running a programme that should be 4:3 (confirmed by checking analogue and digital terrestrial broadcasts). I can get around this by manually switching my television to 4:3 mode, but it's an ongoing annoyance.
I'm less than delighted with the picture quality. It's tolerable, but noticeably inferior to digital terrestrial. This should improve (possibly dramatically) when they make thier mooted switch to MPEG-4, reportedly later this year.
"What the f* are you doing," inquires our colleague Brush Master, "if 1GB/day (or 45GB/month) are a significant complaint?" Here's an example: I signed up for Napster over the weekend and had downloaded 2GB of (entirely legal) music before I even realised it. "Get a life", you say? "Bite me," I reply. For a service that supposedly represents the new era of digital convergence, 1GB per day is a joke.
But seriously - we can moan about traffic limitations as much as we like; I believe we need to live with it. I expect all signifficant providers to introduce usage limitations unless you pay through the nose. It's just not manageable otherwise.
The universal use of bandwidth caps is far from inevitable. As some major players introduce them (hello, BT) other ten-ton gorillas build their marketing around the lack of them (I never thought I'd say this, but kudos, AOL). Saying "it's just not manageable" without limits is nonsense. If the largest ISP in existence (AOL) can pull it off, I'd hardly say it's unmanageable.
At these levels, bandwidth is flat rate. ISPs do not pay per gigabyte transferred; they pay by the megabit or gigabit per second. If an ISP have, say, a 1Gbps connection with a peer, they will pay the same whether they use 5% or 95% of it.
BT say that 3-5% of their broadband customers are the sort of "bandwidth hogs" targeted by their new limits. It's a safe bet that the overall average bandwidth use is far below their cap levels (15GB/month for 512Kbps users). The point of these limits is not to save money today; it's to prevent the ISPs from having to upgrade their outbound connections to something larger and more expensive. It's a misguided attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Bandwidth use will rise, and it will rise dramatically. Today we're starting to see the launch in the UK of commercial music services like Napster and Rhapsody based on "all you can eat" flat rate subscription models. I pity he who subscribes to Napster and tries to listen to much 128Kbps streaming music with a 5GB per month limit. (That's 91 hours of music per month, if you're curious. I don't know about you, but 3 hours of music per day is not a lot for me.) Tomorrow or the day after we'll see movie download services like Movielink. We're entering an era of copious, cheap digital content streaming down your broadband connection, and miserly download caps simply aren't going to cut it. ISPs will either have to upgrade their connectivity to meet the demand or create a lot of pissed-off customers looking to jump ship to AOL as soon as their contracts expire.
Incidentally: HomeChoice's bandwidth cap for their newly-announced 512Kbps service is a wonderfully ludicrous 5GB per month - that's three times stingier even than the Kings of Stingy, BT! If that sort of bandwidth package were being sold professionally it wouldn't be called 512Kbps. It would be called 16KBps, bursting to 512Kbps.
Actually, most people probably don't spend three hours per day listening to their computer. Music, yes; radio, yes; TV, yes: iPod, yes; computer, doubt it.
- the picture quality is fine compared to analogue;
- the bandwidth limits are OK for watching a couple of hours TV and/or downloading a movie per night;
- the limits would also allow a few hours PC-usage per day, providing that you don't download programs, streaming video or high-resolution pictures;
- the new prices (£27.50 / £35 per month for 0.5 / 1Gb) are attractive at present, but 12 months is a long time
- no-one has noticed phone usage problems;
- subscribers are generally satisfied.
Final question: if you don't use the PC and TV/video at the same time, is the 0.5 Gb service adequate?
Many thanks
One thing I'm still not sure about is the extent of the free (i.e. included in the subscription) TV on demand. The web site says there are programmes from BBC One and Channel 4. So which programmes are available?
For the adverage standard user not intending to download a ripped DVD per day or sucking all of Napster within 24 hours, the 512kbps service is probably more than sufficient.
[Edit: Oops - 512kbps is 5GB/month. Not good enough. 1MB service is 1 GB/day, which is good enough for most. I just confused the two... ]
Does the 5GB monthly cap also apply to internet only? Or to total traffic across the line i.e. including VOD, which is included in the basic price? [Sorry - silly question: of course it applies to internet only.]
Many thanks for the assistance, guys. I'll post further if I encounter serious problems.
- The bandwidth limits won't be a problem for most people right now. But I'd think twice before signing up for the 512Kbps service, as 5GB/month is very low compared to other ISPs.
- 12 months is, as you say, a long time - but HomeChoice does represent an excellent value if you take into account the combination of broadband plus digital television.
- HomeChoice uses standard ADSL, just like that from any other ISP. It will not cause problems with ordinary voice phone usage.
- The bandwidth limits do indeed only affect broadband service, not television.
- The video-on-demand library is not very deep. "Top 20" is a fair description of the BBC and Channel 4 replay services. If you're really interested, I can make a list of the replay programmes at home tonight. The movie selection is better.
- I would agree that I am "generally satisfied" but not thrilled with the service. Thrilled would require picture quality matching what I get from Freeview, correct switching betwen 16:9 and 4:3, and of course the abolition of those godforsaken bandwidth limits.
That would be great if you have time. Or is there a proper list on the web site? The bit I've seen is very vague.
BBC One: Silent Witness (2 episodes), Top of the Pops, Holby City, EastEnders (4)
BBC Two: Wimbledon highlights (5)
Channel Four: Bo Selecta, Derren Brown, No Going Back, Hollyoaks (7)
The STB is tiny (about the same size as a VHS case) and feels very nice. It's also very responsive and the interface good. Certainly better than any cable or Sky box at the moment. Nice metal remote with plastic (rather than rubber) buttons too, though I can't get it to work my Thomson TV.
The VOD library is pleasingly large, with a wide varieety of programming which I am told is updated monthly. And I've found that despite the inclusion of MTV and VH1 etc, I haven't watched them. Why would I when the V:Mx service is ad (and screen clutter/DOG free!) and I can skip songs that I don't like?
Exploring all corners of the service seems to keep revealing yet more stuff, for example Disney Treasures has a selection of free films.
The internet service seems very speedy too. Initially I had the well known DHCP lease time issue with my wireless router, but that seems to have sorted itself out now. Upload times are good and the webspace quick.
I've also been impressed so far with the quality of customer service, always getting straight through to someone on the 0845 number. Hopefully this will continue rather than due to them having a relatively small number of customers at the moment. The installer was also very professional, certainly more so than the Sky and ntl ones I have experienced. Surprisingly included in the box with the STB was a 2-way mains plug adaptor! So now I have yet another one of those, and yet another ethernet cable. The scart lead supplies seems to be thick and good quality. Also a nice touch is that the user guide book and installation CD are presented in a HomeChoice tin. With thouches like this I wonder if this company is burning money too fast?
So far I'm very pleased with the service, not least because I can only get analogue cable and no Sky. My wish list:
- A bigger range of UK comedy, and more series available at once (for example at the moment of Red Dwarf only one series is available)
- Surprising omissions of artists and songs from V:Mx fixed
- Better picture and sound quality on certain channels (to be fixed later this year with MPEG4)
- More information about forthcoming on-demand programmes (currently only provided for the kids programmes on Scamp)
Could you let me know what this was? I am having HC install this morning and have a Linksys Wireless router
Reading adslguide.org.uk suggests that the DHCP lease time HomeChoice uses is very short, maybe 1-5 minutes. This means that a connection not doing anything much will lose its IP and get another one assigned. Computers connected directly to the box seem to cope OK, but some routers get confused and revert to an internal IP, which means your connection gets interrupted. I'm using a Linksys too, and setting the DHCP lease time on it to something under 5 seems to fix it. I also updated to the latest firmware.
Regarding the UK Gold image quality, note that some material shown there is fairly old and not in state-of-the-art image quality to start with. Or they operate on cheap equipment; basically NTL digital cable also shows UK Gold and others with signifficant less image quality compared to BBC1,2,4.