The New York Times has an article today with an intriguing premise: the world of video on demand is here, and it’s being delivered by . . . the Post Office.
DVDs hold digital versions of movies. Netflix is mailing out digital data on DVDs – an estimated 1.5 terabytes per day. To give you a comparison, it’s estimated that the total amount of data carried per day on the Internet in North America is between two and four terabytes.
In other words, there just isn’t the bandwidth to deliver high-resolution movies to your home over the Internet. There’s no technical solution to that problem in the immediate future. Getting movies by mail isn’t quite the instant gratification that you have in mind when you think of video on demand – but it’s as close as we’re likely to get for the next few years.
Fortunately, Netflix is a wonderful service – I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Here’s the New York Times article. If you haven’t been to the NYT before, you’ll have to go through a short free registration process.
