How often do you watch it?

[Regulus]

Or you could just stream it. Done that several times before. Quality seems good for everybody when I did it last!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not with my upload speed.

[DGFone]

Yeah, we simply all agreed to pause the movie at a certain part of the intro (usually something like 5 seconds in) and have a count time to when we all un-pause it. As for who cried first? I dun cry!

[KingCub]

Or you could just stream it. Done that several times before. Quality seems good for everybody when I did it last!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not with my upload speed.

Hahaha, true true...

I really need to watch again sometime, but I always hate watching it alone! I just hate all movies alone...

[Timon the great]

and not just everyone "screen syncing" to be on the same part of a movie.

That's the only way to do it without wasting ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

Not necessarily Reg. And KingCub definitely has a point. You don't need to have the fastest connection in the world to do what he was saying, without much flack.

Me and an old buddy who lives overseas in Europe did it through Skype with another program that emulates whatever is on your desktop through a webcam driver the program itself creates to be used like on Skype. And not a regular webcam driver that's meant to just show yourself. I know Skype has its own app sharing thing, but it doesn't perform well enough to properly stream a movie that would go fast enough to be "watchable", and would definitely use unnecessary BW.

But in terms of this desktop cam program, I tried it when I was living in an apartment while going to a University a few years back. And believe me, the connection performance was A Lot worse and unstable than my cable connection here at home. Bandwidth fluctuated only some depending on the day (like worse during the evening when more students were using the internet in their apartment rooms, and somewhat better in the mornings 'cause many are gone to class).

But either way, the program was designed to stream video from yours to someone else computer. So obviously it's programmed to stream it right while not putting a strain on your connection's bandwidth. And that's pretty much what it did when I showed a movie to my buddy with not much lag at all as far as I can remember.

So I imagine if I had done the same thing here at home now, it would yield very good results to at least several people. Though if one of them is located well on the other side of the world, it could turn out to be not so good for them. Of course, the recipients are probably not going to be able to see it in HD like you may be able to locally. But there are definitely tools out there that can be used to stream a movie to several contacts like on Skype, and they can still have a decent viewing experience.

I need to find out what the name of the program is that I used back on my old 15.6" laptop in 2009. And it didn't maliciously affect the machine nor did it hog up the system's resources. But doing this beats having to tell everyone when to pause the movie and such while watching it from their own computers.

[Regulus]

Some people here may have those Godly, fiber-optic internet connections, but I'm not one of them. I can upload 1 megabit per second, at max. A 360p video on YouTube has a bitrate of 1 megabit per second, and that's not including audio. At most, 240p would be the video quality everyone else would receive from me.

Have you ever watched a 240p video? It's awful.

And, that's assuming I'd be uploading to a dedicated server first, which inevitably generates lag. If it's not a dedicated server, then the bandwidth required is multiplied by the number of people watching. Since that number increases so rapidly, it's completely unreasonable to do it that way. But there's a problem with dedicated servers, too. There's at least 30 seconds to a minute, sometimes more, from the time the signal is transmitted, to the time the signal is received, because it must be interpreted by the server, first. Just that, in itself, completely invalidates the entire purpose.

But still, let's assume we can use a dedicated server without the lag. A 1080p video stream with audio is still going to cost over 8x the bandwidth that I have (source).

And, that's provided that my CPU would be able to encode and compress the video in real time, without diminishing the quality significantly, on my end. I have a pretty quick CPU, but only the best of the best processors on the market can handle that sort of thing without screaming and crying.

Someone could do it, but not me.

But regardless, it's just not an efficient method, anyway. Even 1080p, when compressed, the video signal is hardly better than DVD quality... if it is even better than DVD quality. Most of the time, YouTube videos look like VHS quality, even in HD.

I know it sounds lame, but screen syncing really is the best method, and by no small margin.

[DGFone]

But regardless, it's just not an efficient method, anyway. Even 1080p, when compressed, the video signal is hardly better than DVD quality... if it is even better than DVD quality. Most of the time, YouTube videos look like VHS quality, even in HD.

I know it sounds lame, but screen syncing really is the best method, and by no small margin.

That. You can spend hours and hours figuring out the best way to watch the thing online, or you can just screen sync and done.

Speaking of which, should we go and organize some big MLK TLK watching event?

[KingCub]

That. You can spend hours and hours figuring out the best way to watch the thing online, or you can just screen sync and done.

Speaking of which, should we go and organize some big MLK TLK watching event?

Im in! I honestly don't care how we all watch it, whatever is easiest for everybody out there.

[Timon the great]

I did some research just a short while ago and I believe I have returned to the source of the program I was talking about.

I know it sounds lame, but screen syncing really is the best method, and by no small margin.

It doesn't sound lame. I almost completely forgot that I was talking to an engineering major when I made my last post. So you definitely make a compelling statement. But I will agree And disagree with your entire response without developing it into some sort of argument, because that's not how I go about these things.

Yet, I'm going to stick with the evidence that I have seen from using the linked tool above without going too technical into this for the forum community's sake. The main thing is, you can't expect to always settle for the best in life. So while the video quality may not be in tip-top shape, I still find that what I've done already proves that it can be a convenient method as it has nothing to do with utilizing YouTube, dedicated servers, or related. Notice, I only said in my last post that the program could be used to conveniently broadcast (that should've been the word to use) to "several", and not "many" people. But to "several", that's still sufficient IMO.

I know everyone has their preferences. So if you prefer to do the manual screen sync thing, then that's your method of choice. This whole ordeal isn't something that I actually planned on going that deep into anyway.

Have you ever watched a 240p video? It's awful.

I have actually on YouTube. It's not as "awful" it seems. Yes. It may not be anywhere near 1080p playback quality, but that doesn't mean it's garbage. To me and probably also based on my laptop hardware, it actually feels like you're watching a good VHS tape back in the 90s to be very honest.

Someone could do it, but not me.

'Never said you were "The One" to do it like in The Matrix

I just merely emphasized that it could be anybody or me as an example.

[DGFone]

Based on the "How fast is your Internet" topic, the only people who can stream real time are KingCub and me. Me being because I'm old-fashioned and therefore hardwired to my college's Internet, while everyone else have to compete over the wireless.

But as for everyone else, streaming is SOL.

[Regulus]

Good bandwidth does not mean wired internet. I have identical speeds on my laptop's WiFi and on my desktop's direct connection.