By
September 10, 2018
A few weeks ago TVNZ made an announcement that could change the way we watch television forever. The national broadcaster joined TV3 to deliver live television online.
What that effectively means is no longer are we confined to watching television in rooms with aerial inputs and televisions, we can now catch up on the latest news or the antics at the Rover’s Return and Summer Bay from the kitchen, the home office or even the back yard using a smartphone, laptop or tablet and our home broadband.
Online live streamed TV is easy to access. In the case of TVNZ, if you have a smart TV you can use that to access TVNZ’s website directly. If you don’t have a smart TV yet, all you’ll need is a Chromecast (available from $69 from most electronics retailers). And from your smartphone, computer or tablet you can just jump onto TVNZ’s website. TVNZ also plans to offer Apple TV support for its online TV later in the year.
As our home broadband is responsible for more of our day-to-day activities, a reliable broadband connection has become as important as electricity. US Cloud tech company, Akamai studied the effects of our online experiences recently by using face-coding software and skin sensors to study the physical responses of 1200 subjects to different quality live streams. They found that a two-second period of buffering in a 1-minute video clip resulted in a 16% increase in “negative emotions”.
To avoid the chance of encountering television-based negative emotions, you’ll need to choose your broadband connection carefully. TrueNet has studied the different broadband types at different times of the day and has found that fixed line broadband (ADSL, VDSL and fibre) are the most consistent and reliable at all times of the day.
Online TV has also impacted the amount of data we’re consuming at home too. Back in 2011 New Zealand households on our network were using on average 10GB of data per month. That’s enough data to watch two episodes of Game of Thrones and then post about it on Facebook. For a whole month! As at June this year, homes and small businesses on our network used an average of 147GB per month –nearly 15 times the amount of data we were using only five years ago. And with new ultra-high definition 4K televisions now using 7GB every hour to stream high quality content, that trend is only set to continue. Uncapped broadband plans are the best way forward in an environment where we’re increasingly using our broadband connections to access TV content.
If your broadband is up to speed, the next time you’re considering climbing on the roof in a raging storm to fix the aerial, or you’ve encountered the rain fade screen of doom, you can relax and log on to your favourite channel’s website and enjoy your favourite show in any weather, from just about anywhere you choose.
Source: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87
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