Watch movies on Web?

[monkey44]

We have only a hotspot ... and 5G a month (but could get more)

If we want to watch a movie - order one - it will take a lot of our allowance? Is that correct?

We asked this once before - but tech changes occur so fast, we're wondering if we 'download' and then watch a movie, or if the hotspot is active the entire time, and so it uses a lot of the 5G?

Can someone explain exactly how the movie thing works on a hotspot? And if it's practical to watch very often on the LT or PC under these conditions -

It's not worth it for one / two a month, and use all our hotspot, but if there's a way to do it effectively and efficiently, let us know.

We do Red Box occasionally, but that's not always convenient, or a pain to go out daily ... especially when we camp far from towns, usually.

[monkey44]

2oldman wrote:

monkey44 wrote:
AND, they all do it, so it doesn't matter what you hear, the final billing is ALWAYS more on these monthly services.

Try getting a good estimate from a hospital for surgery!

No thanks - would rather watch a movie. Heck, have you ever tried to interpret a hospital bill AFTER the surgery. Good luck with that. 🙂

[2oldman]

monkey44 wrote:
AND, they all do it, so it doesn't matter what you hear, the final billing is ALWAYS more on these monthly services.

Try getting a good estimate from a hospital for surgery!

[monkey44]

PawPaw_n_Gram wrote:

monkey44 wrote:
Don't know about anyone else, but we only care about the size of the bill, never how it's figured.

Then you have to remember the electric company model - the more you use, the more you pay (or someone has to pay).

Like a lot of people, I really love my fast fiber optic internet connection at home.

But I also realize that speed only is possible where I can pay for a dedicated hookup at a flat rate (and my internet monthly rate does vary by how fast I want that connection to be).

It cost a lot of money to provide that type service any other way - and if I want that service - I'll be the one to pay.

I'm old enough to remember when we had to pay for on-line services by the minute, and early internet access. The same way type things I would do to minimize my on-line bill in 1988, and internet bill in 1994 work today with cell hot spot data plans.

Correct, we get what we pay for -- but still, those that want it pay for it. Pay more for it - but still, no matter how it gets there, the number at the end is what you pay, anything in between mean nothing to our checkbook.

Cracks me up, or upsets me - whichever - for example when Sprint says, "Cell phone is $50 a month" - Then the bill comes and it says, "$50 for minutes, $3.21 tax, $1.80 for line fee, $2.20 for access fee, $1.94 Sprint operation fee ... and the check I write comes to $59.15 - so, how does that equal $50 a month ... well, it doesn't.

But just because Sprint can label a 'fee' it does, and adds (not subtracts) from the actual charges. What is annoying? Well, just tell me the REAL charges not the FAKE charges ...

Bean Counters and Ad Execs try every way in the world to "semi-deceive" the customers with words and numbers and labels. AND, they all do it, so it doesn't matter what you hear, the final billing is ALWAYS more on these monthly services.

I'd just like to see total honesty in the information. Add the fees up and tell me what it costs, not what it costs before all the mandatory fees. Matter of fact, Sprint even has a 'Sprint fee" that it even tells you is NOT mandatory, but Sprint charges it anyway, "Because we can."

The fact that we pay these service fees remain irrelevant, we all pay, and we all want some kinds of services. You need a math degree to figure it out ... and we'd all buy it anyway, even if the 'semi-deceiving' part was more truthful.

We can easily buy less service and have less bill per month - that's not the point - we pay a little more, get a little more because that's our choice.

But of course, that kind of honesty went out with prohibition... 🙂

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

monkey44 wrote:
Don't know about anyone else, but we only care about the size of the bill, never how it's figured.

Then you have to remember the electric company model - the more you use, the more you pay (or someone has to pay).

Like a lot of people, I really love my fast fiber optic internet connection at home.

But I also realize that speed only is possible where I can pay for a dedicated hookup at a flat rate (and my internet monthly rate does vary by how fast I want that connection to be).

It cost a lot of money to provide that type service any other way - and if I want that service - I'll be the one to pay.

I'm old enough to remember when we had to pay for on-line services by the minute, and early internet access. The same way type things I would do to minimize my on-line bill in 1988, and internet bill in 1994 work today with cell hot spot data plans.

[monkey44]

docj wrote:

wa8yxm wrote:
this is kind of a change of topic but I was reminded of something today.

Google NET NEUTRALITY and read up on it.

The courts have struck down FCC rules which say all comers must be treated by the same rules on the net.. This will allow ISP's to give higher rates to some types of data.. Such as Hulu and Netflix and other streaming videos.

Could lead to some good size bills for those who stream a lot of video. (I hope, though in the larger view I think it's a bad decision but I really do not want to get into the politics.. What is above is fact, I will not defend it, you can google it,, My dislike is opinion and I'll not defend that either)

I believe the net neutrality issue pertains to the content providers such as Netflix and not the individual users. I believe the issue is that Netflix has a lot of data to transmit (as do lots of others) but they need their data moved at high speeds. If this ruling were to stand it could mean that Netflix, for example, would have to pay more for its internet connection than another content provider that doesn't require the speed but moves the same amount of data (for example, DirecTV Cinema which is streaming data but it is stored on your DVR, not necessarily watched right away.)

The net result might be that your Netflix subscription might cost more per month, not that you will be charged more for streaming it.

docj -- doesn't matter what they call it - or how they derive the billing - fact is, IT will go up, not down. Right? 🙂

Don't know about anyone else, but we only care about the size of the bill, never how it's figured.

[monkey44]

docj wrote:

wa8yxm wrote:
this is kind of a change of topic but I was reminded of something today.

Google NET NEUTRALITY and read up on it.

The courts have struck down FCC rules which say all comers must be treated by the same rules on the net.. This will allow ISP's to give higher rates to some types of data.. Such as Hulu and Netflix and other streaming videos.

Could lead to some good size bills for those who stream a lot of video. (I hope, though in the larger view I think it's a bad decision but I really do not want to get into the politics.. What is above is fact, I will not defend it, you can google it,, My dislike is opinion and I'll not defend that either)

I believe the net neutrality issue pertains to the content providers such as Netflix and not the individual users. I believe the issue is that Netflix has a lot of data to transmit (as do lots of others) but they need their data moved at high speeds. If this ruling were to stand it could mean that Netflix, for example, would have to pay more for its internet connection than another content provider that doesn't require the speed but moves the same amount of data (for example, DirecTV Cinema which is streaming data but it is stored on your DVR, not necessarily watched right away.)

The net result might be that your Netflix subscription might cost more per month, not that you will be charged more for streaming it.

docj -- doesn't matter what they call it - or how they derive the billing - fact is, IT will go up, not down. Right? 🙂

[docj]

wa8yxm wrote:
this is kind of a change of topic but I was reminded of something today.

Google NET NEUTRALITY and read up on it.

The courts have struck down FCC rules which say all comers must be treated by the same rules on the net.. This will allow ISP's to give higher rates to some types of data.. Such as Hulu and Netflix and other streaming videos.

Could lead to some good size bills for those who stream a lot of video. (I hope, though in the larger view I think it's a bad decision but I really do not want to get into the politics.. What is above is fact, I will not defend it, you can google it,, My dislike is opinion and I'll not defend that either)

I believe the net neutrality issue pertains to the content providers such as Netflix and not the individual users. I believe the issue is that Netflix has a lot of data to transmit (as do lots of others) but they need their data moved at high speeds. If this ruling were to stand it could mean that Netflix, for example, would have to pay more for its internet connection than another content provider that doesn't require the speed but moves the same amount of data (for example, DirecTV Cinema which is streaming data but it is stored on your DVR, not necessarily watched right away.)

The net result might be that your Netflix subscription might cost more per month, not that you will be charged more for streaming it.

[monkey44]

wa8yxm - pretty interesting read. Sorta of illustrates the issue of 'net quality' as well. Showing everyone (if transparency in fact occurs) that those with 'higher spending habits' can buy special treatment. Not exactly a new phenomenon in our world. Depends on which side of the bit you chomp whether that's good news or bad. But I agree with wa8yxm, bad court decision for most of us. Thinner wallets always seem to draw the shortest straw.

[wa8yxm]

this is kind of a change of topic but I was reminded of something today.

Google NET NEUTRALITY and read up on it.

The courts have struck down FCC rules which say all comers must be treated by the same rules on the net.. This will allow ISP's to give higher rates to some types of data.. Such as Hulu and Netflix and other streaming videos.

Could lead to some good size bills for those who stream a lot of video. (I hope, though in the larger view I think it's a bad decision but I really do not want to get into the politics.. What is above is fact, I will not defend it, you can google it,, My dislike is opinion and I'll not defend that either)

[2oldman]

If you want newer or newest releases, then DTV PPV is good, or a real theatre. I'd sure rather wait a few weeks and pay DTV 5 or 6 dollars and not have to go anywhere. Theatre sound is terrific, but, HD movies are sometimes better than a theatre picture.

I pay for 16G of data when we're travelling, so I can watch a lot of old TV on that much data. It's a 'sunk cost' for me with a working spouse.

[monkey44]

We appreciate all the advice - and sometimes it's above my ability to 'set-up' these digital components (Past experience anyway) and get the best settings and service. My fault, no one else.

And, based on what we see on Cable and prior satellite services - we'd get repeats or lower-quality programs.

At some point, that could be value for the money - but for us, either $10 or $20 EACH would be more than we think is the value -- if it works out to a similar charge (monthly say) as the cable or satellite (lots of movies, regardless of quality) then worth it maybe. But to pay prime fees for less than premium movies, we'll probably pass ...

And, sometimes the responses make things more complicated than we expect as well - lots of good info, lots of opinions. But, now that we "get it" we'll pass and continue with occasional Red Box for less than two bucks each.

Oldman2 is probably correct - streaming/digital movies aren't for us at this point ... Thnx M44

[Redsky]

With Netflix you can set the resolution for watching programs using the Internet. We found that we could use the lowest resolution setting and had no problems with the picture quality on our 52" TV. The upscaling from the DVD player is probably responsible for the great quality.

With a TV show that has 42 minutes of viewing time the data usage is about 275MB at this resolution. At the highest resolution setting the usage is closer to 3GB and you are not going to see a difference with most of what you watch.

We get free movie streaming with Amazon Prime but have not been able to determine how to reduce the resolution being provided so do not use it.

The Cradlepoint 95 and 1400 routers that provide Wifi as WAN can be used to track actual usage in real time. We do this with our Millenicom service so we know day to day where we stand with our 20GB cap. These routers can also be easily set to send an email alert to your computer when you reach a level that you set for advance warning.

[docj]

monkey44 wrote:

2oldman wrote:
Perhaps digital movies are not for you.

Yeah, probably not - mostly because the cost of the data streaming seems very high - it equates to $20 for a movie, PLUS cost of a movie.

If you had read wa8yxm's post carefully you would have seen that typical Netflix streams are more like 1 GB = 2hrs which is consistent with my earlier post. That means a movie is more like ~$10 not $20. To me that's a big difference. It's only a bit more than two senior tickets to a movie (not including the gas to get there) and only a bit more than a pay-per-view on cable or DirecTV. Depending on what your data plan charges you for overages, the price may not go up all that much.

[monkey44]

2oldman wrote:
Perhaps digital movies are not for you.

Yeah, probably not - mostly because the cost of the data streaming seems very high - it equates to $20 for a movie, PLUS cost of a movie.

With technology advancing the way it does, we'd think it would become less expensive, not more expensive. But that seems untrue from this viewpoint.

Even movies on Cable at the house now jump all over the place - from what was once a short time ago $3.99 a movie now goes $4.99 for old repeats and $6.99 or even $9.99 for newer (And not even then new, just more recent repeats) ...

Each time we investigate it, it reminds us why we don't do it ... Course, even the investigation sometimes becomes entertainment 🙂 🙂