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A comment on Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV. Parent comment

Re:Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV by georgerobinson on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:35PM (#10194387)
This is a genuine question. How many households do you suppose have an Internet connection that can support 4K? I don't know the answer for the USA, but I can see from a Ofcom report published at the start of the year, about 68% of households in the UK would not be able to stream 4K on Netflix due to insufficient broadband speed. Just 1/3 of households have connections with 30Mb/s or more (http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2015/broadband-speeds-novembe...).

I'm not saying this a valid excuse for omitting 4K support. However, for the most part I don't think the infrastructure is really there for the wider population. I live out in the sticks and barely get 3Mbps.

Perhaps we might see 4K come to the Apple TV next year either as a software upgrade on current hardware or with better GPU/CPU to support it.

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Re:Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV by martinald on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:46PM (#10194454)
30% may subscribe but nearly 90% (in England) have it available to them: http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/?area=eng

Probably a chicken and egg problem, why upgrade to fibre many people will think when you have no need for it apart from slightly faster large file downloads

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Re:Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV by georgerobinson on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:51PM (#10194494)
Thanks for the link! If 94% of the population can subscribe to BT's FTTC service and get at least 25Mbps then the state of broadband in the UK is much better than I had previously thought.

That said, 25Mb/s is at the lower end of the FTTC service. I can imagine a lot of households will max out at around 40Mbps due to distance from the cabinet and cross-talk on busy lines (though vectoring should help somewhat). I would like to see what G.FAST can deliver but unshielded copper phone lines can only take you so far.

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Re:Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV by martinald on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:12PM (#10194649)
Don't forget that ~50% can get up to 300mbit/sec (by the end of the year) with Virgin Media. And probably 2-3% more can get direct FTTP with Hyperoptic, BT or Sky/TalkTalk or other altnets.
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