Legal Research

Web TV

By Shaunna Mireau

I live in a one television household. One television supplied with data via satellite dish, 3 cell phones, 3 laptops, a desktop, an iPad, 3 iPods with screens and the best piece of tech – a long play record player that has a USB port. We don’t watch a lot of television, but for a family of four, we do consume our fair share of internet bandwidth.

There is plenty of news lately about internet delivered television. Google TV, Apple TV, and way back in 2005, PC World talked about Microsoft’s Internet TV, today’s version being Microsoft Mediaroom. That doesn’t include all the channels that appear on smartphones. Even the BBC is getting ready to deliver service with this technology.

Simon F. discussed work and play converging with internet television. I am more concerned with TV wrecking my internet.

If Jim, Bob, Dan, and 150 of their friends go online before work to download the latest ‘gone viral’ movie so that it will be ready to watch when they get home, what does that do to the capacity I have at work during the day? Am I worried for no reason?

Not to pick on one provider, but Apple TV offers specs for HD movie downloads:

6 Mbps: less than 1 minute
2 Mbps: about 2 hours
768 Kbps: about 8 hour

Speedtest.net tells me that Canada has decent average internet speed. It also tells me that my speed at work (4:30 p.m. MDT) is 7.29 Mbps download which would give me an 800 MB movie in 15 minutes. The little graph shows my office speed significantly above average. My home ISP offers “up to 3.0 Mbps” and is “Ideal for moderate surfing and file sharing”.

Should the collective we who rely on things like web delivered legal research be worried?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on July 29, 2010 (boomark / email).