> streaming HD movies.

I can see why big business loves streaming: control and an income stream (no pun intended).

I detest streaming.   What I watch I normally want to watch several times, forget about it for a few months and then watch it again: and repeat.

What streaming means (would mean) is that not only do I 'download' the thing once I have to 'download' it again each time I want to watch it. No way am I putting up with that.   And they want me to /also/ pay a subscription.

In the case of movies it'd be far cheaper (and way, way, way more efficient) to buy the thing on an optical disc, especially as you can always get used (genuine original) copies on ebay/amazon/google shopping for not much more than the actual download cost if you are over your download allowance (and I will be). And if you do really tire of it you can sell the thing again on ebay.

I've no particular gripe about real downloading, and paying a fair (and what's charged is /not/ fair at the moment, price too) of files but the industry appears dead set against that: I can appreciate their problems, though.

I'm not interested in HD either; DVD is fine, hell, virually all that I watch is avi, flv, mpeg or mkv or some such variation.

I'm not so confident people want HD: they may get persuaded into it.

I'd much rather have content and let my brain deal with the lack of 'quality' reproduction wise.

A 25 minuite TV programme in really good compressed quality, xvid/avi for example, weighs in at around 232KB which don't take much time to download at all, really; and it could be a lot quicker in my case as it's the originator/network that slows it.

It must be the dodgy sites I download form ... as I said I never max-out just downloading 1 file; several at a time might do it, I've not tried it.

So what's left?

As you've said, twice, a nominal 8gbits is fine for normal use.

If it's there and 'free' I'll use it but it won't make any real difference to me.

I'd much rather have increased useage allowance.

I am not a lover of all this streaming malarky either, but it is the way of the future. To download a true HD movie with 5-7.1 surround sound will be in the region of greater than 6MBytes a second, at the moment on our 8mbit lines we dont even get 1Megabyte a second download.  Streaming if I can avoid it I will unless its videos from the likes of youtube or BBC player and some other tv channels but no way would I attempt to stream a movie that was 10s of gigs in size.

The likes of xvid and other codecs is decent in quality until you go fullscreen, especially if the programme you download is only normal tv resolution and in some cases even lower and especially if you have a 24+ inch monitor, but I can deal with it and can easily watch lower quality encoded programmes so long as the subject matter takes my interest.

I usually download from usenet which maxes me out 24/7 and probably maxes everyone out who uses it, also when just getting a normal download via my browser it will normally hit between 500kbps - my line max, it all really depends on the server that we get our downloads from.

As before, the only thing the increase to 20mb will do for me is allow me to download more faster, thats it.

> streaming malarky either, but it is the way of the future

It would seem that those with the money/power want it to be.   We'll see.

The older compressed vid is, as you say, a bit poor at full screen (although it's passable on an ordinary TV such as I pump it to).   More recent material uses digital sources and is much, much better.

An awful lot depends on how the source is transcoded, what codecs are used and what compromises the processor decides on. Personal preferences play a big part.

What I currently have is good enough for me.  

The upgrade from VHS (the first video machine I used was in the early '70s and was actually a very unreliable real-to-real afair made, if I recall correctly, by Akai; Phillips V2000 cassette, about 1972, was a huge improvement) to DVD was well worth it; beyond that is, IMO, very debateable.

It's similar to FM/Digital; although FM is undoutbaly /better/ quality than digital we're still being forced to go ditigal because the money says we must.

But as I have no money what I think/say counts for diddly-squat anyway...