I was wondering if anyone knew why we've been able to watch high quality videos instantly on our televisions for the last 50+ years, and yet our new advanced computers struggles to buffer even a standard definition video in real time? I realize that there are different internet packages and service providers to choose from, but I have a very high speed internet package, and I still find it slow. Since both technologies use the same connection (standard cable jack) why is there such a HUGE difference in speed? You would think we'd be able to download videos in real time (like a television) but for some reason we can't.

Can anyone explain to me why this is the case?

It's the quality of your ISP. And some of them are dickheads and expect sites like youtube to pay them a fee or else they'll throttle the shit out of your connection. You can try a VPN to see if your ISP is a dick. Another thing to note, is that the content broadcasted on TV is not really something of high bandwidth stuff.

If my ISP is the same company that I use to get my cable TV from, then you would think (in theory) it would make no difference between the two speeds. If the ISP provides me with high definition TV through the exact same cable jack, then I would think it was safe to assume that the Internet speed should reflect a similar speed to that of the TV?

My Samsung runs a 4 40.

I don't know what that means ... =)

Nope, your ISP can prioritize traffic. Even a cheap home router has QOS, you can imagine that the hardware your ISP has it's much better

You are comparing apples to oranges.

For example, when you talk about "we've been watching real-time TV for 50 years...", earlier it was fully analog, so you can't directly compare to digital data feed.

Moreover, also digital TV is one way, and there's no error checking and re-downloading for missed data etc. So when you are watching TV feed, you will just get visual errors and arfifacts, or even black outs, if you are unable to catch certain bits of the feed the first time, the system will not try to get it again for you. If you missed it, you missed it.

Internet video is buffered so that you will see the same data exactly the same way each time, without errors. If there are hiccups in the feed and the buffer runs out, you'll have to wait some time, but you will not miss any of the feed as with the TV feed you might.

That said, there are also real-time internet TV broadcasts that work more like that, ie. missed data will not be downloaded again, and minimum if any buffering or error checking.

Thanks for the info!

Actually if both timppu and OlivawR's answers were combined it makes a lot of sense.

The ISP's are perhaps giving preference to Television 'bandwidth' ... and the Internet feeds are continually searching for the best information, as opposed to a 'one directional' feed that you get from Television.

I short your ISP is probably knocking back your streaming ability, through intentional interference with the data you get from major sites.

In Israel we don't have HD on our commercial channels, Virtually all is some (720p or less) content on several cable/satellite channels,
And our upload rate is downright awful (Even on a 100MB Download Speed we only get 2MB Upload, that's a 1/50 ratio),
And yet I can stream YouTube Full HD (1080p), Or from about 5 major local sites offering HD streaming, and can access Gog HD streams or connect to any other global content provider (like Netflix) through VPN without any noticeable streaming problems for the past 5 years or so.
10-15 MB download should definetly be enough - If you have more and can't Stream properly something obviously isn't right.

edit: And regarding your last post, It's not exactly a preference issue - the cable provider is using different streams via the same cable to send both Internet and Digital TV streams and it shouldn't interfere with one another, even when you have a local upload channel on your TV box (like we have for interaction such as VOD and interactive games) - they can usually send about 5 times more data through the Internet channel.

check

Denied.

just for a few seconds plz