Skip to main content

In South Korea, You Download a Movie Faster

Technology Review reports that there are technical reasons holding back Apple's launch of movie downloads, but it has nothing to do with the iTunes platform or iPod device constraints. Whether a consumer has a dialup or a broadband connection, it takes only a few minutes to download a song from iTunes. In contrast, the Lord of the Rings trilogy would be several thousand times larger -- yet have to be downloaded at the same rate.

Choosing a file format carefully can mitigate the problem, but only somewhat. Apple owns the QuickTime format, whose latest QuickTime 7 Pro version, includes the H.264 compression/decompression standard, which is also used in the new generation of Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. It compresses data into a much smaller space than the MPEG-2 codec used on DVDs.

As a result, a DVD-quality movie rendered in H.264 will take up half as much room on a disk drive and be twice as quick to download. (The H.264 standard is also designed to allow viewing at many different scales, from low resolution for 3G cell phones and video iPods to high-definition versions with 1,080 lines of vertical resolution.)

But the HD movie trailers that Apple currently offers on its website still weigh in at more than 100 megabytes. And even with H.264 compression, an entire movie would amount to well over one gigabyte and take an entire evening to download at the 1.5-megabits-per-second maximum cable or DSL modem speed available to most Internet users in the United States -- which lags far behind many other developed nations in the capacity of its "broadband" links to residences -- The average South Korean household, for example, has 10-megabit-per-second access to the Internet.

"This is one of the reasons why there's no activity taking place" in movie downloads, says Frank Casanova, director of QuickTime Product Marketing at Apple. With a 1.5-gigabyte movie file, "you could request a movie from Netflix [which delivers DVDs by mail] before this download gets to you."

Popular posts from this blog

How Cloud Fuels Digital Business Transformation

Across the globe, many CEOs invested in initiatives to expand their digital offerings. User experience enhancements that are enabled by business technology were a priority in many industries. Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7 percent to a total of $597.3 billion in 2023 -- that's up from $491 billion in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Cloud computing is driving the next phase of digital transformation, as organizations pursue disruption through technologies like generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Web3, and enterprise Metaverse. Public Cloud Computing Market Development "Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda," said Sid Nag, vice president at Gartner . Organizations view cloud computing as a highly strategic platform for digital transformation initiatives, which requires providers to offer new capabilities as the competition for digital business escalates. "For example, generativ

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year