In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds have not improved

Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by c3534l on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @02:58PM (#24053330)

I don't buy this. We had an old cable box that had instantaneous channel-switching. The cable company made us switch to a brand new one. Same signal coming in, but the new one was infinitely slower. It wasn't some change in the signal that made things slow, it was the software and the complete lack of care for performance.

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Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by naikrovek on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:35PM (#24053667)

You not "buying" it doesn't make it untrue.

You get the cable box for the new system BEFORE they switch the old system off, or else you wouldn't have service until you got a new box. That's why you saw behavior change with the new box.

It simply isn't possible to send all the channels to customers at all times. There isn't enough bandwidth. So, the cable box at your house negotiates with the central or regional system so only a subset of channels are sent to you. There is no other way to do it in digital cable systems, and the switch to digital was made because it uses significantly less bandwidth than analog.

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Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by LanceH on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:10PM (#24053413)

The old cable boxes were literally switches, with all channels flowing into the box all the time. Now switching is virtual and done on the server (plus all the software encoding/decoding).

Right now I would be satifsied with at least some caching of the menus, so it doesn't have to pull the data every damn time I scroll up or down. Come on, it should be able to remember what channels I have for more than 5 minutes in a row.

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Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by naikrovek on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:37PM (#24053691)

It probably does cache the data, and it just takes ages to draw. Manufacturers really cheap out on settop box CPU and RAM specifications in order to make the pricing attractive to cable companies.

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Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by RulerOf on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @05:23PM (#24065769)

...but then it costs you a thousand dollars if you lose or damage the set top box.

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Re:In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds... by naikrovek on Friday August 07, 2020 @10:42AM (#24082379)

Yes and they still have insurance to cover the loss, anyway.

You didn't think a cable company was going to deal with it's customers fairly, did you?

Every time you interact with a customer, there is an opportunity for profit. Telecommunications companies, cable TV included, are masters at this type of behavior.

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