Apple TV: Saturday Night Stats
On Wednesday, I admitted that I hadn’t yet tried out my increased DSL speed on an Apple TV progressive-download rental. You had to know it wouldn’t take me long, though, right? 
To wit, last night I indulged a guilty pleasure and snagged the standard-def Saved!; quite an enjoyable film with a much-appreciated underlying message of tolerance. But I digress…
As a reminder, here’s a snapshot of the typical bandwidth my upgraded DSL pipe delivers:
Some stats for you:
- According to Apple TV’s time graph, the total film running time was 1:32:22.
- Each percent download ‘tick’ took approximately 35 seconds.
- The film was reported ‘ready to play’ at ~2.5% downloaded, and I dutifully complied. Unlike last time, I encountered no subsequent playback stumbles (although, in the interest of full disclosure, I did pause playback a few times, for a few minutes each time).
- Extrapolating statistics #1 and #2, the total download time was a bit over 58 minutes or, said another way, ~1.6x real-time.
- More extrapolation, coupled with my average downstream bandwidth (which I rounded up to 2.5 Mbps downstream, and assuming no congestion either at Apple’s servers or in-between them and me), gives a total file size of ~1.1 GBytes and playback bitrate of ~1.6 Mbps (I think I did the math right; let me know if I messed up somewhere, readers).
Remember; this was a MPEG-4 AVC (aka MPEG-4 Part 10, aka H.264)-encoded presentation, in standard-def resolution. The file size and playback bitrate stats are in line with what I’ve seen before with standard-def Windows Media Video (aka VC-1)-encoded content from sources like Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, Movielink and the Xbox Video Marketplace. And if they’re right, this means Apple’s servers were able to deliver me the content as fast as my ‘pipe’ could take it, even on what was presumably a busy Saturday night.
Ready to play less than 2 minutes after pressing ‘purchase’; now that’s what I call progressive download! And even if you put aside the going-out-hassle and gas-cost factors, it’s about 30x faster than a round-trip to my local video store would take…assuming, of course, that my local video store would even have the movie I wanted in inventory (all of which is part of why I don’t completely agree with David Pogue). Next step: a high-def rental download, once I find something worth dropping $3.99 or $4.99 on. I’ll report back my results, of course; stay tuned.
Hmmm…I wonder if I should spend an extra $5/month for AT&T’s 6 Mbps downstream plan…and I wonder when AT&T’s U-verse fiber service will make it to the Sierras (I’m not holding my breath on that last one!)…
