# Downloading your entertainment... the wave of the future? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2006, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669 "2006-03-16T23:02:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Santos\_L\_Halper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/santos_l_halper/32/1_2.png) [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/21 "2006-03-21T01:17:35Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Sure downloads will replace broadcast TV, in exactly the same way movies replaced theater, and TV replaced movies and radio. Well, a lot of “broadcast tv” has already been replaced, by cable. I have no idea what the percentage of TVs get their signal via cable rather than antennae, but it’s got to be a pretty big majority. But no, I don’t think that NBC is going to be going off the air any time soon. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/22 "2006-03-21T02:19:27Z")
Hell, I’ve been left behind already. I’m still stuck with dialup. :sad: ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/23 "2006-03-21T03:54:39Z")
There will always be a place for broadcast TV for news, live sports premiers of TV shows and other events in which timeliness matters. But for ordinary content, the advantages of on-demand are just too compelling. A significant proportion of Australians are doing media on demand NOW albeit through illegal channels. The figures many people are tossing around are for MPEG2 or equivilant encoding. Using more advanced codecs can drastically reduce the bandwidth. For a standard xvid compressed SDTV show, it works out to be about 140KB/s or so to stream real time or 1Mbps. This is easily achievable using current, P2P infrastructure. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/24 "2006-03-21T08:43:02Z")
> [@Santos L Halper](#): > > Maybe I’m looking at it incorrectly, but it sounds like they’re saying that in seven years, 40% of the country will have _faster_ than DSL, and the other 60% will have to _settle_ for _only_ getting DSL internet speed. Gee I’ll feel really bad for the people who have to poke along at only DSL speed. 🙂 Not have anything faster than DSL includes everything at DSL speed and below. So anything from dial-up to the fastest DSL. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/25 "2006-03-21T08:48:04Z")
It is now possible to legally download The Office. Thats the US version, also they are specially produced mini-episodes. > [@](#): > > The trend for TV shows that are legally available to download will get a boost when 10 mini-episodes of the US version of The Office are produced especially for the internet. [The Office Goes Online](http://www.yourtv.com.au/news/index.cfm?i=81735) ---
**Author:** ![Santos\_L\_Halper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/santos_l_halper/32/1_2.png) [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/26 "2006-03-21T23:37:23Z")
> [@Imasquare](#): > > Not have anything faster than DSL includes everything at DSL speed and below. So anything from dial-up to the fastest DSL. You’re right, I mis-read what he was saying. But thinking more about it I find it odd. > [@](#): > > but after seven years, 60 percent of U.S. homes still won’t have anything faster than DSL. He’s lumping together DSL, dial-up and people who have no internet connection at all? So 40% of the US home will have cable or fiber optic. Maybe another 30% for DSL. That’s going to be something like 75 million households with broadband. He seems to be arguing against the notion of TV being replaced by downloading and concluding therefore that _no one_ is going to be downloading shows. In seven years, will NBC, ABC and Fox be out of business because everyone’s now downloading everything? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a sizable percentage of TV watchers who download all or part of the shows they watch. ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/27 "2006-03-22T00:36:42Z")
A couple of articles of interest… > **[Retired Site | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/retired-site/)** > > This Content is No Longer Available > **[Retired Site | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/retired-site/)** > > This Content is No Longer Available ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669/28 "2006-03-22T00:39:35Z")
Yeah, there ain’t no future about it. Almost all of my students have iPods and the like. I polled my high school classes on how many of them had been to a record store in the past year to buy music for themselves. Out of about 40 students, three raised their hands, and even those said they had gone only once. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-your-entertainment-the-wave-of-the-future/348669.md?page=1)