[tptacek]

To bust a 250GB cap with NetFlix, you have to watch 250 hours of exclusively HD content; 8 full hours a day, every day, nonstop.

[DrJokepu]

To be honest, in a family of four or larger, that's not entirely impossible to achieve as family members' individual usages add up.

[Bud]

You're also leaving out what the household might be doing with its Internet besides Netflix, and you are conveniently ignoring the 150GB cap on DSL service.

Why are you defending AT&T for lowering its level of service by an order of magnitude and imposing gigantic overage fees?

I did some quick math. I could go over this cap on my DSL line simply by using my connection at full speed for LESS than a tenth of a month; i.e., less than 2.4 hrs per day. Sorry, that's not acceptable on an "unlimited" link.

[prodigal_erik]

Thanks, I wasn't aware that their HD bandwidth requirements were as modest as 2.6-3.8 Mb/s, from both a more effective codec and limiting fidelity to 720p30 stereo.

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html