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$40 for a couple of movie streams...ouch.

That's why I'll be leaving my video streaming to Wifi only.

As long as you watch your movies at your local trendy coffee shop on the free WiFi.

If you watch them at home, you'll risk going over your ISP's bandwidth cap.
 
niceee.. HD content, can't wait

im in areas with wifi 90% of the time, thus got a wifi only iPad... been pretty good to me so far
 
What kind of network capacity will we luddites need over wifi?

Just a decent gigabit router....My TC does a great job..It's the data cap we should be looking at here...In THEORY i'm not capped, but VM do insert a "Fair Usage" clause in my contract...I have yet to discover what that means...I think I may subscribe to Netflix now, so I'm likely to find out.:)
 
Just out of curiosity, could the studio's release content in higher then 1080p for streaming to those devices with Retina displays?

Notice I said could..... :)

the new iPad refuses to play videos larger than 1080p, so it would be pointless. unless somehow the app maker used a different method of playing videos than the iOS standard like BBC iPlayer did for a while, but it would mean sacrificing things like Airplay.

also I doubt the difference between 1920 wide scaled to 2048 and 2048 wide at a 1:1 ratio on 9.7 inches of display is noticeable enough to warrant the effort
 
I thought it already was HD. The last time I tried streaming a movie over 3G, I nearly went over my 2 GB data cap.
 
Netflix has got to throw more resources at encoding, though. About 30% of their content is unwatchable because of crap encoding. For an example, check out Lilyhammer (terrible made-for-Netflix show that's great for a laugh). The show stutters because of a reversed fields problem (I'm guessing that's what it is, same thing that plagues Camelot)
I feel sorry for anyone who accidentally runs out their limited data by streaming Netflix over LTE or 3G.

Forgetting LTE, Here's a question: does the iPad/iPhone automatically use wifi over data if wifi is available? Or does it sometimes jump back and forth between the two? In other words, if you're watching a *lot* of streaming video at home (presumably on your wifi network) do you need to turn your data off in the preferences every time?
 
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Somehow it seems obvious to me... use LTE like you use your smartphone: to look stuff up and do useful things like emailing and checking news/weather when you’re away from WiFi and the task isn’t well suited to your phone.
It's funny because the basic list of things you're allowed to do with mobile data hasn't really changed since the 90s.

Would be nice to actually *use* that LTE infrastructure, and throttle users in intelligent ways only when necessary, rather than imposing pitifully small data caps.
 
As long as you watch your movies at your local trendy coffee shop on the free WiFi.

If you watch them at home, you'll risk going over your ISP's bandwidth cap.

We're streaming almost constantly. No problems. Caps are 150 or 250GB for most. That really is quite a lot.

And ours only just started last month. Or, it was supposed to, I haven't checked, yet. Just downloaded a large file tonight, 2GB, constant 33Mbps.


Oh, on topic, about Netflix....I've really switched to watching it mostly via my Tivo. The interface isn't nearly as useful as a computer or even the iOS app, but it offers more HD and is usually quite smooth. I keep forgetting to check on 5.1 surround, I think it is supposed to offer that, but I mostly watch old TV shows, anyway.
 
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Netflix app is useless on all limited data plans unless netflix starts allowing caching a move on a wifi network, allowing cached playback when the device is outside of wifi network.
 
If you want to watch video when you're away from WiFi, you can do what those who have WiFi-only iPads (and those who had the 3G version but never signed up for data) have been doing all along: Sync the video you might want to watch to your device's memory, and then watch it off-line whenever you like. Just not during take-off and landing.

How do you sync movies to memory to watch later?
 
Forgetting LTE, Here's a question: does the iPad/iPhone automatically use wifi over data if wifi is available? Or does it sometimes jump back and forth between the two? In other words, if you're watching a *lot* of streaming video at home (presumably on your wifi network) do you need to turn your data off in the preferences every time?

Interesting question. Today I was playing with the VPN setting on the iPad, while doing some other work on my MBP. The WiFi hiccuped (hiccoughed, whatever), and went out. So the iPad switched automatically to LTE. Doing so, killed the VPN session. I reconnected the VPN on the iPad, and in a minute or so, the WiFi signal came back. When that happened, the iPad switched back to the WiFi automatically, and it did so without losing the VPN session.

The answer to your question is: The iPad will strongly prefer a trusted WiFi signal over VPN, so as long as your WiFi is stable you don't have to worry much. I think if you were streaming, the service providing the stream would stop sending it if you switched from WiFi to VPN (your device would probably get a different IP address, so it wouldn't look enough like the device it had done the handshaking with).

On the other hand, I'm not an expert in how these things work. It's possible that some really smart people at Apple or somewhere have figured a way to switch between WiFi and cellular data seamlessly.

If you want to be sure, especially if you've opted for the 250 MB plan just for occasional email, you'll probably want to turn the LTE off except when you actively want to use it.
 
If you want to watch video when you're away from WiFi, you can do what those who have WiFi-only iPads (and those who had the 3G version but never signed up for data) have been doing all along: Sync the video you might want to watch to your device's memory, and then watch it off-line whenever you like. Just not during take-off and landing.

Since when has this been possible with Netflix?

Even if this is an option, it sucks to decide what you want before you're ready to watch. It can be impossible to know in advance what kind of mood you'll be in at a later time, when you're able to consume the content.

I've been a wifi-only iPad user all along, and get by just fine. Can understand how cellular iPad owners are frustrated thou.
 
I run 4G to my iPad with my rooted Galaxy S2 and don't have to pay for the tethering, bring on the HD movies!
 
Netflix for iPhone: Still useless for the basics

An app that's only really viable if streaming over wifi b/c of caps or throttling. I still I can't update or manage my DVD queue via my phone unless I go via Safari. The netflix site is much wore than most in small format. Netflix how about something useful here?
 
Somehow it seems obvious to me... use LTE like you use your smartphone: to look stuff up and do useful things like emailing and checking news/weather when you’re away from WiFi and the task isn’t well suited to your phone. Then use WiFi for the massive tasks like streaming video. Are there really that many people who watch a lot of video and yet think their LTE plan is a full replacement for WiFi? That seems like an odd mix of being tech-savvy and being clueless.

This is obviously the intelligent way to approach the problem... But what's the point in having LTE, then? For tasks like email and checking the occasional quick web page 3G only feels the slightest bit sluggish. If that's all LTE is good for at the moment, it hardly seems worth the trouble Apple went through to incorporate it.

(Mind, I haven't used LTE. There's no LTE coverage in my area, and I have a Wi-fi iPad anyway. I'm sure it's a revelation--heck, the advertised speeds are faster than my home DSL. But still, high-speed wireless seems kind of pointless if data limits mean you're only doing the same tasks you were doing before.)
 
People who have maintained an unlimited plan on their iPad are NOT throttled, unlike iPhone users.
That is counterintuitive, but I'll take your word for it. Do you have assurances that it will remain so?

I have no first-hand knowledge, since I took the $5/month savings when the 2GB plan was offered for $25 a month on the iPhone. I had never and have never come close to that in my own usage.

I had a WiFi iPad 1, and though I got the 3G iPad 2, I never activated the service (I mainly wanted the GPS, and the option to use 3G). This is the first month I have activated service with 3GB LTE on AT&T. Unlimited is not an option for me.

I might have opted for 3G on the first iPad, but at the time I was working three weeks a month in the UK, so my one week at home each month didn't make it attractive. If I had, I'd be over $800 poorer now (the 3G premium plus 24 months at $30 a month), without much to show for it.
 
Since when has this been possible with Netflix?

Even if this is an option, it sucks to decide what you want before you're ready to watch. It can be impossible to know in advance what kind of mood you'll be in at a later time, when you're able to consume the content.

I've been a wifi-only iPad user all along, and get by just fine. Can understand how cellular iPad owners are frustrated thou.

I don't tweet but the hashtag #firstworldproblems seems appropriate here.

Remember when you had to go to Blockbuster to rent DVD movies, and you'd end up taking several home, not knowing if you'd still be in the mood to watch them by the time you had the opportunity?

Remember when you went to Blockbuster to rent VHS movies, and if you wanted to go back to a scene you had to hit rewind and wait for the spooled tape to get to the spot you wanted to see again? Be sure to rewind the tape before you turn it in, or there will be an additional fee.

Remember when to rent movies you had to join a club where you paid $45 to get in, and you still had to pay $3 each time you exchanged your one rented movie for another (though at least at the end of the six-month membership you got to keep the last tape you rented)?

Remember when renting movies was done at a little Fotomat kiosk in the middle of a parking lot where you dropped off film for overnight developing? You chose from a couple of Xerox pages of movies. I think you had to reserve the movie and come back the next day to get it. It was $8 (in 1981 dollars) for a three-day rental of a Beta videocassette.

Remember when you just had to watch what was on TV? If it was a Saturday afternoon, you had better be in the mood for badly-dubbed Japanese sci-fi.

I remember all of it, and I can't believe how easy we have it now in terms of entertainment choices.
 
er, does it say they'll force you to watch HD? I'm guessing there will be an option/button to let you decide.

at the end of the day if you're on LTE you've chosen the plan you prefer based on the usage you expect. If you expect to be streaming HD video all day, then you shouldn't choose a 500MB plan. really not rocket science.
 
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