>
> There is a lot of hub-bub about people downloading movies and burning
> them down to DVDs. The idea that this practice could become widespread
> like downloading MP3s is doesn't seem logical, because the time it takes
> to actually download and burn a DVD movie is so long (greater than 1
> day) most people would not bother. Additionally, the quality of the
> movie you download varies so widely, many people would become frustrated
> and give up on the process entirely before it could become a real
> problem.
As soon as there are people combining their bandwidth and making deals about sharing with eachother, the problem is not only real, it is acute. Think about campusses, appartment buildings with an internal switched ethernet etc. Not only will the servers be > 2 TB before you know it, you will soon see that pay-per-view TV is distributed realtime over these networks as > 5 Mbps streams.
> Given a high-speed connection (up to a T1) and a high capacity server at
> the other end, how fast could you download a movie and burn it onto a
> DVD?
I can occasionally peek behind the scenes at 3 ISPs here, so let me enlighten you on some things ;-)
First, a T1 is to slow to properly download DVD's. If you are serious about dowloading a lot, you get an uncapped ADSL line (8 Mbps) or you make 'friends' at a campus.
Next thing you get is either 'friends' with FTP servers, or an unlimited account at a commercial news service. Forget about P2P, it is a toy not meant for serious downloaders.
You are now in a position to download 4 to 5 DVD's per day (around 20 GB).
Depending on the ISP, you will be disconnected in 2 to 6 months because of overusing an oversubscribed service. At that point you will move on to the next ISP.
Cost of this is about $100 per month, so if you sell 5 DVDs to 'friends' every week your own internet is for free.
If you mean DVDs for real-time watching, you need a line capable of maintaining a 5 Mbps download (cable TV networks use 5 Mbps MPEG-2 in their distribution networks).
Jochem
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