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MacWorld reviews the 3G iPad – nice unit, but not for video streaming
May 4, 2010 | 2:02 pm
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By Paul Biba
Won’t go into all the details of the review, but the bottom line is in the headline above.
Macworld found that the video quality delivered over the 3G network was significantly lower than on WiFi. Netflix is down-sampled, for example, and they call the quality “passable”. The AirVideo video streaming app had pauses in playback and the updated ABC Player had highly variable quality.
YouTube videos were “practically unwatchable, due to their low quality” and were “terribly pixelated”.
On this whole this does not surprise me at all. I’ve used my 3G iPhone all over the country on AT&T and find that AT&T’s network is extremely unreliable. Sometimes even using Safari, or trying to get email, on the iPhone is almost impossible on 3G. According to the article the iPad uses exactly the same hardware as the iPhone. For me, if I ever got an iPad I wouldn’t bother with 3G as I’m completely turned off on the AT&T network. Here’s hoping Verizon gets the iPhone sometime soon.
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Comments:
Clearly I’m missing something. I thought the iPad was all about mobility and video. If you’re going to be tied to a wi-fi hotspot, wouldn’t it be just as well to have a laptop? When I win the lottery, I’ll buy various flavors and see what I’m missing.
Rob Preece
Publisher
The key point with 3G cellular service (whether it is AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon, etc. – and if you don’t live in Europe where apparently everyone has excellent 3G service (or so I hear)) is that YMMV and all evidence is anecdotal unless proven otherwise.
In my travels, along the East Coast (US), since getting my iPhone 8 months ago, AT&T 3G service has steadily improved. Locations that had Edge at the beginning are now 3G.
Of course, I don’t travel to cities, like NYC and San Francisco (isn’t that where MacWorld is located?), where AT&T 3G service is so apocryphally bad that AT&T sales reps/execs have to go out in disguise to get past the pickets of disgruntled iPhone users in front of their offices — and my home city in TN has excellent AT&T 3G service.
I turned off my wifi and tried out the abc.com app and it looked fine to me. Hutto, TX near Austin. The ATT service problems have grown into an act of faith, and may be true in certain cities, but I’m happy.