NBC Warns Metered Broadband Users

NBC is making available to Internet users the ability download videos of Olympic events right to your computer. NBC has setup a site called ‘NBC Olympics On The Go’ to handle the installation of software in order to view the videos. NBC lists the system requirements as:

System Requirements

Software

• operating system — Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit currently not supported)
• Windows Media Center required — included with Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate

Hardware
Note: if you meet the software requirements above then you most likely meet these hardware requirements as well.

• processor — 1GHz 32-bit processor minimum
• memory — 1GB mininum RAM (2GB recommended)
• disk space — minimum of .5GB per subscribed channel + 1GB add’l
• video — 1024×768 minimum resolution; support for DirectX 9 graphics, minimum 128MB VRAM, WDDM Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, 32

 But what is surprising is this statement from NBC:

NBC Olympics On The Go delivers large video files; it may use a lot of bandwidth. It is not recommended for people using dial-up or metered broadband accounts.

The ‘metered broadband accounts‘ statement is what is bothering. The FCC has taken on Comcast for metering broadband service. But what the FCC has failed to do is to make it illegal for all ISP’s to throttle back broadband. It seems that NBC is aware that metered broadband is being used by ISP’s other than Comcast and thus the warning.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.