Tech question (transfer to, movies, legal)

[namder1]

I admit to not being very techy so here goes. I have a mobile device for my laptop. It searches for the nearest cell tower and provides high speed internet. I pay around $50 amonth but really like the thing because you can take it any where and use it. I pay for 5 gigabytes and usually use around 3. My question(s) are, 1. what is a gigabyte and 2. would I be able to watch movies like Netflix or would I burn up too many gigs?

[Northern Maine Land Man]

A kilobyte is a million bits of information.
A megabyte is a billion and a gig is a million million or trillion bytes. The next step up is a terabyte and we are not there yet in wireless transfer ability for the casual user. I don't watch movies on my computer, just the occasional youtube snip. Out here in the woods we have no cable TV and DSL is far better then the dial-up we used to have, but nothing like the fiber optics that go through our town. We have two fiber optic lines that go through here, but it is not for us. The state "backbone" goes by my house. It brought high speed data transfer to Aroostook County, but we can't tap into it.

[maureenb]

What is a gigabyte?
YouTube

How many gigs does Netflix streaming use? Got Bandwidth Caps? Netflix Has You Covered

[retiredtinbender]

I jump in too. It has to do with binary code, to my knowledge. Best as I understand it, a gigabyte is one billion bytes. A byte is around 8 or 10 bits. A bit is a 2 digit code (1 or 0 in sequence) How many pints in quart? Bottom line: it's a lot of info and streaming.

[CoastalMaineiac]

Originally Posted by namder1

I admit to not being very techy so here goes. I have a mobile device for my laptop. It searches for the nearest cell tower and provides high speed internet. I pay around $50 amonth but really like the thing because you can take it any where and use it. I pay for 5 gigabytes and usually use around 3. My question(s) are, 1. what is a gigabyte and 2. would I be able to watch movies like Netflix or would I burn up too many gigs?

A Gigabyte is a unit of measurement for an amount of data. The smallest unit of data is a bit.
8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte

It goes by 1024 because computers use base-2 (binary) numbers.

It sounds like you have around 2 gigabytes to spare, which could enable you to stream one (maybe two) films without going over, but you'd want to keep really good track or they'll nail you with extra charges.

An average, two-hour long video is probably around 700 megabytes to one gigabyte.

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by CoastalMaineiac

A Gigabyte is a unit of measurement for an amount of data. The smallest unit of data is a bit.
8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte

It goes by 1024 because computers use base-2 (binary) numbers.

It sounds like you have around 2 gigabytes to spare, which could enable you to stream one (maybe two) films without going over, but you'd want to keep really good track or they'll nail you with extra charges.

An average, two-hour long video is probably around 700 megabytes to one gigabyte.

Almost got it all right.

Missed some-

4 bits is a 'nibble'
After gigabyte comes terabyte and then petabyte.

(Note: Some disc manufacturers play loosely with the definition of a 'gigabyte', and in the small print you will find that it is one billion bytes and *NOT* a true 1024MB.)

Base 2- A transistor has two states, either 'on' (1) or 'off (0) (if anyone has noticed, power switches are now often marked with a 0 and 1 to indicate 'off' and 'on'), which can indicate a single bit of information.

One hour of standard audio and video will fit on a single CD- 700MB.

A hi-def movie with dolby 5.1 surround generally requires nearly 4.7GB- a single sided, single layer DVD. Longer movies require either multiple DVDs, double-sided DVDs or double layer DVDs.

(Blu-ray disks are being phased in, not because they offer significantly more capacity than DVD, but because the encoding schemes offer more anti-piracy protections than DVD.)

[Maineguy04654]

Originally Posted by Zymer

(Blu-ray disks are being phased in, not because they offer significantly more capacity than DVD, but because the encoding schemes offer more anti-piracy protections than DVD.)

For the first 5 min they where out they did. You can copy a bluray on any modern xp or higher based computer quite easy. Remember it is LEGAL for you to make back ups of movies you own. Systems like the ps3 incorporate hard coded anti copy software ( cause they are Sony ) with there updates this is why the older non updated machines go for as much as new ones. I copy all my blurays to a hd that plays through a media player in 1080 with 5.1 sound and my disks get played one time to copy then they go in the rack. They are played off the HD ( no computer involved just a media player ) also as a major benefit this gets rid of all the pre movie crap the disks are encoded not to let you skip. You scroll through the movies pick one press play and THE MOVIE starts no previews no endless menus or warnings.