Harry Potter

Yesterday YouTube doubled the upload limit available to users in response the increasing number of high definition videos that are being sent to the site. Now you can upload a 2G file, instead of a 1G file. YouTube has made it easier to upload a high definition file as well. According to Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee.com, YouTube has done this because “HD videos are now becoming a significant part of the YouTube library”.

They look gorgeous, no doubt. Check out this trailer from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Click the full screen button to see the full impact. It’s really darned impressive.

Don’t expect to see a lot of Canadian high definition content, however. Not that there aren’t people in this country shooting high definition video, who might have a strong desire to share that video. It’s simply a matter of bandwidth and usage caps. All broadband providers in Canada, excepting a few small outfits in Vancouver, cap usage at between 50 and 150G of transfer per month, and restrict upload speeds to under 1 megabit per second, except Shaw who have raised their upload limit to a meagre 2 megabits. We’d be in our graves before YouTube received our videos at these speeds.

	Uplink Speed	Downlink Speed	Monthly Allowance	Price
Rogers “Extreme Plus”	1Mbps	16Mbs	95G	$99.99
Bell Internet “Max 16”	1Mbs	16Mbs	100G	$72.95
Telus “High Speed Turbo”	1Mbs	10 – 15Mbs	100G	$43
Shaw “High Speed Warp”	2Mbs	25Mbs	150G	$94
Videotron “Ultimate Speed Internet 50”	1Mbs	50Mbs	100G	$89.95

Pathetic, no? Even worse, most of the small business offerings from these providers consist of repackaged residential service, with a better service agreement and a higher price.

Does it matter if a few people can’t upload video? Perhaps not, unless you’re a Canadian culture supporter or Heritage Minister James Moore. But what about the other impacts of capped usage and restricted upload bandwidth – the economic and environmental impacts? Applications like VPN, remote desktop, and VoIP are the cornerstones of telecommuting strategies. Those applications are dependent on high speed upload as well as download. When telecommuting is impaired, it has an economic impact to business, and an environmental impact on society. We should all care about that!

So how about it Rogers, Bell, Telus, Shaw and Videotron? Download speeds have increased steadily over the last decade, but we’ve had upload speeds of under 1Mbs since the dawn of broadband. Shouldn’t we have better?

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I took the kids to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire yesterday, at the local Famous Players theatre. I planned it out, purchasing the tickets online ahead of time, and arriving 45 minutes before the show. Even so, it was a zoo. The place was packed. There were probably 4 screens showing Harry Potter, and we still ended up in a line which stretched out of the theatre, and down the fire exit.

So, was it worth it? Absolutely. The plot had roughly the same elements as the three previous Harry Potters — Harry goes to Hogwarts, enters "challenge" which he’s clearly too young for, wins challenge, confronts evil, escapes by skin of teeth, exposes infiltrator, and hang out with pals Hermione and Ron. But the execution keeps getting better and better. The acting isn’t nearly as wooden as it was in the beginning, the special effects are better, and the evil more believable.

Some favorite elements:

Brendan Gleason as the new Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, Mad-Eye Moody is great. Much more engaging than Kenneth Branagh’s Professor Gilderoy Lockhart.
the scene of the dancing lesson with Professor McGonigle teaching Ron to dance. Rupert Grint does the pained teenage boy perfectly.
the underwater sequence is magical. The mermaids are a little "fishier" than you might expect, and the challenge a little more horrific.

Various reviewers have written about how scary this movie is compared to previous Potters. It does have its moments, but it’s not a fright-fest. The DeathEaters, for instance, are less scary than the Dementors from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. As one reviewer commented, perhaps the most frightening thing is the ending — unlike other Potters, the coming battle against the real evil is left open. The last line of the film is Hermione’s "Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?".

Go see it. Take your kids. And if they’re small, sit by them and give them a hug during the scary bits.

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