Poll: How long a wait for downloads?

Pete Muller

A few minutes is not a problem. I would, however, offer multiple resolutions... or a possible alternative would be to offer one resolution but different length "clips" (e.g. a 30 second taste of the video, and then the full length version).

I'm with Nick though: keep it MPEG (or stream it), and avoid Real video.

PM

Kim Zobbe-Hogdal

quote:
Originally posted by Jeff Franz:

My question to the forum members is...

How long would you be willing to wait while a video file loads? (As an example, the hypothetical video clip is 30 seconds long) Would you wait 2 minutes for that footage? 5? 10? 30 minutes?

I have the world's oldest and slowest computer/modem, so I am used to playing minesweeper while stuff downloads

I'd be willing to wait 3-4 minutes.

Dave Stevens

quote:
Originally posted by Tony Gaylord:

Personaly, even if there was a 'vote' to who had dialup and who had broadband, your not ever going to see it supercede dialup, just can't happen.

I don't know that I would say "never". Depending on which numbers one reads, adaptation for dialup is falling, while broadband is increasing in the 100% of percent. It's estimated that 1/3 to 1/2 home Internet users by 2006 will be using some sort of broadband. Right now, dialup rules the roost, though some specific B2B sites, such as ours, the majority of users are either on WANs or broadband.

The idea behind the survey, (which is widely used by content creators/ providers), is to determine how to prepare the content. Depending on the application, the preparation of the content could be more expensive than serving it. If one were streaming, the bit rate of the stream can be determined by the server communicating with the plug in. If one is providing downloads (which IMNSHO is the best choice right now for EKN), the content for each download rate will have to be created. That is where knowing the connection rates of your users comes into play.

Sorry for the off topicness.......

Dave

Darren Swisher

Jeff, 60 seconds tops.

Darren

Rob Hogenmiller · Joined: 20 Jul 2001 Posts: 850

Typically for me I will wait about 15 seconds if it is a Real Player or Media Player format that loads quickly (the ones that buffer, my minds drawing a blank) any more than that I say forget it because the quality isn't that good even with the picture super small.

I like the High Quality ones like MPEG or Quicktime because I can just download them like a file and look at them later. I'll download something for 2-15 minutes in the background on dial up connection while I'm doing something else. i.e browsing other pages, making pages or whatever.

As for the Sound I'd 100% agree with Marc Miller on that one-- a video without sound is Hummm Dry and Boring, even music put to a video is an improvement.

I also apprecaite the size of the file accompanied next to the download link. If it's 3MB-5MB no problem pretty similar to a MP3 you would grab.

Looking forward to seeing the new section!

Rob Hogenmiller