T-Mobile CEO Responds to 'Binge On’ Controversy, Announces 14 New Partners

[Surf Donkey]

I can't say the same for when I used to view HD quality on AT&T. Streaming YouTube or Netflix was almost unbearable with the constant pauses on HD.

So why didn't you just turn down the quality?

 

[keifer.street]

All of these people complaining about 480p quality on the iPhone obviously has never seen it or used Binge-On. I stream Netflix on my daily commute to catch up with my TV Shows (can usually get 2 episodes out of the way per day). The video quality with Binge-On has not bothered me once (it actually doesn't really look any different than HD).

In fact, I suffer none of the buffering or lag that people speak of (probably people who don't actually use T-Mobile and Binge-On, or have poor service reception complaining). My experience has been great. It's a bit blurry for the first ~5 seconds, and then clears right up (looks great). I've never once had a stream stop for buffering, even on YouTube (which is also lowered to 480p when Binge-On is enabled).

I can't say the same for when I used to view HD quality on AT&T. Streaming YouTube or Netflix was almost unbearable with the constant pauses on HD.

Because the services you're using to view the video have variable bit rate resolution scaling support. If you try to watch a video that does not support variable rate resolution, you will experience the buffering I promise you

 

[Arndroid]

If they made it opt-in, then idiots would claim that they watched tons of Netflix last month because they thought it was free and didn't know they had to opt-in....they just thought it was free because they saw a commercial from T-mobile. Making it opt-out makes it work for most people and those that care and are more likely to know what they are doing can make a conscious decision to opt-out and have the data count against their plans if they want.

Lol with it being opt in , t mobile gets to rake in the cost savings of Lower quality content to people who don't need such Assistsnce or who aren't in danger of hitting their data cap.

This is a money grab by Tmobile with this decision to go opt out instead of opt in nothing else
[doublepost=1452470336][/doublepost]

Whether 480P is good enough on a phone screen is neither here nor there. The issue is that T-Mobile have not properly implemented this.

If a content provider hasn't signed up to be part of binge-on then their content shouldn't be downgraded.

It smacks of T-Mobile coming up with a way to reduce the load on their network, rather than upgrading the network to handle the load!

This pretty much sums it up. Combined with the whole thing being opt out, it has been horribly implemented. T-mobile has nobody to blame but themselves.

They have reduced the quality of their service without asking customers if they want to make the trade off. Some people don't stream enough to matter. Some have unlimited data. These customers are being directly misused by t mobile to cut their costs.

And lol at so many people thinking you can't recognize 480p on mobile devices these days.
[doublepost=1452470554][/doublepost]

That doesn't even make any sense whatsoever. So if my TV's resolution is 1920x1080 and my iPhone 6s is 1334x750 the video on the TV is being scaled more than the phone so in fact the exact opposite would be true but a noble attempt.



If you think 480p is blurry on a small screen maybe it's not the screen causing the problems here, I think you're in need of an eye exam.[/QUOTE
Actually if a person don't see 480p as being blurry on iPhone 6 or beyond screen then they are the one who need an eye exam. What it likely means is their eyesight is so poor that it is washing out higher quality videos to the point they match 480p.

[doublepost=1452470968][/doublepost]

Interesting that this (reducing cellular usage) is the reverse of WiFi assist (increasing cellular usage) and in both cases people complain that they are opt-out..

Is it hard to understand that people just don't like businesses utilizing or changing their accessibility without the customer okaying it first?

There is no technological reason not to make these things opt in.

 

[kyleh22]

Check out his response to the EFF question then:

https://twitter.com/EFF/status/685199019161726976

Ignorant deflective answer and honestly he was a bit on a downward spiral yesterday. Not his finest moment and I am sure a PR person (if he has one?) was anxious to take his phone away. But hopefully after a good nights rest he feels better.

Wow this really caught me off guard! thanks for sharing!

 

[BruiserB]

Lol with it being opt in , t mobile gets to rake in the cost savings of Lower quality content to people who don't need such Assistsnce or who aren't in danger of hitting their data cap.

This is a money grab by Tmobile with this decision to go opt out instead of opt in nothing else

True, it does have benefit to T-mobile, but I guess I would call it win/win. T-mobile has less stress on their infrastructure, but the customer gets access to more video. Customers who don't notice the difference are a windfall to T-mobile, but those that do are free to educate themselves and turn off Binge-On.

I guess T-mobile could make some kind of annoying pop-up that comes up every time someone tried to play an unoptimized stream saying "Did you know you could save data by opting into Binge-On?"

Then we could all complain how crappy it is that T-mobile is trying to inform us and that we just want to play our video.

 

[tbrinkma]

Wrong! BingeOn is data maximizing option that manages data badnwidth of BOTH free content providers and non partner providers. If you want to only use this feature for free content, then turn the option off when you want to use YouTube.

You said, "Wrong!", but then completely agreed with what I wrote.

BingeOn degrades video quality for *all* video, regardless of whether the site is a BingeOn 'partner' site or not.
BingeOn *only* ignores bandwidth from 'partner' sites, so videos from NON-partner sites still count against your limits.

 

[ConnYoungy]

Unless you hold that phone realy realy close to your eyes this your statement is simply wrong.
Picture Quality (the part of it that is dependant on resolution, there are many other factors but those have nothing to do with resolution so those are mute here) depends on how many dots cover a certain area of your field of view.
In other words: the smaller the screen or the further away the screen is the less a viewer benefits from a higher resolution.
The math behind this boils down to angular resolution (the number of pixels per degree of the viewers field of view)
For a very easy approach to this you can check out http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/size-to-distance-relationship
which gives a good overview.

That is the whole idea behind retina displays...you calculate the typical viewing distance and increase the resolution to a point where the human eye can no longer recognize a higher resolution (or as apple implements it differentiate between pixels, which is close but not exactly the same)

To get back to your statement:In your "equation" there is one factor missing...

Thankyou, but I understand the science of resolution perfectly fine without your intervention. A physical DVD playing video via hardline to a tv is far superior quality to 480p resolution streaming wireless by carrier to a phone

 

[dmdev]

[doublepost=1452470968][/doublepost]

Is it hard to understand that people just don't like businesses utilizing or changing their accessibility without the customer okaying it first?

There is no technological reason not to make these things opt in.

Nope, not hard to understand or imagine at all -- just interesting is all I said. Why would you reply with that tone?

 

[tonyr6]

Binge on 480p is not really 480p. They promised 480p+ DVD quality but Netflix streams at the 1050kbps 640x480 480p encode which looks terrible and worse than DVD. Only the 1750kbps 480p encode is the true 720x480 DVD quality.

 

[freepomme]

1. Be very leery when a company says it's doing something to "benefit" the customer.

2. This should be OPT-IN rather than OPT-OUT.

3. I don't care what quality the stupid YouTube video I'm watching is.

4. I'll watch Netflix on my TV or my computer.

5. At least the guy comes off as genuine.

This Binge On automatically streams data and it doesn't even count towards your unlimited data. And it's already activated for you. This is heaven sent.

Meanwhile you've got people complaining that they can't stream anything because they don't have enough data.

You can't complain now. Violates rights? They're just plain jealous and well, we can see it.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

It's really that simple ......

 

[tonyr6]

Netflix Binge On is not 480p+ which is 720x480 but VHS 480 which is 640x480.

 

[Surf Donkey]

It's really that simple ......

It would also have been just as simple to make it opt in.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

It would also have been just as simple to make it opt in.

Not really. It's better for it to be initially enabled. People would forget to opt in. If someone wants to opt out, a simple search or call to Tmobile would provide them with the details.

 

[Surf Donkey]

Not really. It's better for it to be initially enabled. People would forget to opt in. If someone wants to opt out, a simple search or call to Tmobile would provide them with the details.

Well that's where we'll agree to disagree. I would not call tmobile choosing to downgrade anything it considers video, even that which is not part of the binge on benefit, to be considered "better" for the consumer.