The cloud without the Internet isn’t very useful

Over at the Interchange Project, I write about how I wanted to watch a movie on Friday night that I had purchased and was storing in the cloud but couldn’t because my Internet went down for several hours:

My Internet is down. Now I know what it feels like to be Paul Miller. What an animal.

While I hope not to find out what it is like to go an entire year without the Internet, I am lamenting my lack of Internet right now. My wife and I were planning on streaming a movie to our Apple TV. Without Internet, our collection of movies and TVs shows that we purchased and are storing in the cloud are inaccessible. Worthless.

This is one of the issues with relying on the cloud for storage. I have good (by U.S. standards) DOCSIS 3.0 cable Internet at up 50 mbps. Speed I have plenty of.

But what good is all that speed if it’s not reliable?

It looks like I shouldn’t be in too big of a rush to put all of my movies, TV shows and songs in the cloud.

It was a most disappointing night, since I have written about how my dream is to store my entire video collection in the cloud.

To those wondering why I don’t post much anymore, I do most of my writing over at the Interchange Project, my new project to study, analyze and report on the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. The project is also a weekly podcast. We touch on journalism topics often.

I also do a bit of writing for Poynter.org. You’ll find most of my writing on those two sites. I’ll be using this blog to talk about topics that are more journalism focused, but not straight news stories.

I promise to blog more.

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  • http://www.thewayoftheweb.net Dan Thornton

    It’s why I still tend to buy a physical copy of a CD or DVD, rip it to my PC, and then store it on an external hard drive, when possible…

    • http://twitter.com/pwthornton Patrick Thornton

      Yeah, this is a good reason to keep physical media around, especially if you don’t mind storing all of it.

      I live in a two-bedroom condo, so I don’t really want anymore physical media clogging up my life. I still have my DVDs and Blu-rays, but most of my new movie and TV show purchases are via iTunes in the cloud. I do a lot more renting these days due to streaming services. I don’t like storing these digital files locally, because they take up a lot of hard drive space.I only purchase physical discs if its of a movie or TV show where the  video quality is of the utmost importance — Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and similar movies. In those cases, Blu-ray really makes a difference.I’ll just have to hope that I don’t have issues like this with the Internet. This is the first time this has happened in awhile, but I recently switched to RCN for home Internet. It’s possible they just aren’t as reliable.

      • http://www.thewayoftheweb.net Dan Thornton

         Yeah, I’m trying to cut down on physical editions cluttering up the house, but I do it by ripping it then storing the box in the loft – the other option would be to throw the boxes away and use wallets which would make stuff hard to find…

        I do stream content, but it tends to be a Friday night impulse purchase.

        One bigger issue is also that digital content doesn’t have a resale value, but can cost a lot more than the physical copy, particularly in niche subjects – that’s just annoying!

        • http://twitter.com/pwthornton Patrick Thornton

          Those are both fair points. Are we going to lose resale with digital copies? 

          The price of movies is still a bit off to me. $19.99 for a new movie in HD when I don’t get a physical copies seems like a lot. Now I can at least store the movie remotely and redownload it whenever I want. That has greatly upped the value for me.

          Before iTunes in the cloud I wouldn’t buy digital movies. $19.99 for the movie + hard drive space + backup hard drive space + remote backup. That’s way too much money and too cumbersome for me.

          • http://www.thewayoftheweb.net Dan Thornton

             I tend to buy secondhand from charity shops – there are so many albums and films I’ve yet to watch, and at that price it’s less than it would cost to stream/hire.