09 January 2007
Skype's TV Content Project Heavy Bandwidth User
Skype founders are currently working on what is being called the Venice Project. The goal is to provide video and TV content over the web rather than traditional means of broadcasting television.
While this may be a good move to many people, there is one issue. The service currently requires a huge amount of bandwidth. For one hours worth of viewing, the service uses about 320 MB for downloads and 105 MB upload. For beta users the service warns users with a 1GB usage limit that it will reach that limit within 10 hours. If a way is found to compress the stream more, it might be more usable for more users, but currently it's a bit too much for people with bandwidth usage limits to use regularly without penalties from their ISP.
While this may be a good move to many people, there is one issue. The service currently requires a huge amount of bandwidth. For one hours worth of viewing, the service uses about 320 MB for downloads and 105 MB upload. For beta users the service warns users with a 1GB usage limit that it will reach that limit within 10 hours. If a way is found to compress the stream more, it might be more usable for more users, but currently it's a bit too much for people with bandwidth usage limits to use regularly without penalties from their ISP.
