So, what are some of the technical ramifications of the proliferation of video? I’m glad you asked! We covered just the topic in our joint Lunch’n’Learn with Grey Sky Films in April.
The faster Internet speeds available to today have fueled the explosion of new ways of using video. Combine this will the myriad of other Internet usage and you may be asking yourself, “Do I need a bandwidth diet?”
If you are streaming video from YouTube or Netflix, be careful. One hour of video can use 250MB of data transfer. If you are doing this on your smartphone or tablet over the 3G or 4G network in approximately 8-10 hours per month, you’ve used up your monthly plan and could be facing overage charges.
So what do you do? If possible, use a WiFi connection first. Many of the sites also allow you to reduce the video quality which results in less data transfer. Consider downloading the video once (preferably on a WiFi network) rather than streaming which results in a one-time data transfer rather the potential re-transmits that can occur with streaming.
By paying attention to how you access video, you can have your lunch and watch video too!
P.S. Watch out for other potential bandwidth vampires such as NannyCams, Skype, personal video conferencing systems, or cloud-based file systems such as Dropbox or SugarSync.
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