Tomorrow

Redundant Data Storage will be the next great leap in online media consumption. Allow me to explain...

As of this date, users must do business with streaming giants, such as Netflix. There are two problems with this approach. First, it takes time to transfer the data live. And second, it requires a working internet connection.

So what happens if several people in a household are watching different movies from different servers at the same time? And what happens when the power and/or internet connection go down? In both cases the the consumer is out of luck.

There is a solution though, which will only become more feasible as the years stretch into decades: Redundant Data Storage. The totality of the streaming company's content is already pre-downloaded prior to consumption.

What would such an arrangement require? Let's go over the numbers:

Netflix offers around 5,400 movies and television shows, each of which takes approximately 75 Gigabytes worth of space in UHD+. That comes out to a grand total of 405 Terabytes worth of data.

Current data storage costs come in at about $10 per Terabyte. That amounts to $4,050 for the entirety of Netflix's streaming data.

The only question left is: how long would it take to transfer such a large dataset? Given current bandwidth, approximately 3 hours per Terabyte, or 1,125 hours. That is about a month and a half of consistent downloading.

So as of now, it remains essentially a pipe dream. But if there is one thing we can all consistently rely upon, it is the inexorable march of technological progress.

Over the last two decades, transfer speeds have risen by a factor of ten, from 100 Kb/s to 100 Mb/s. And over those same 20 years, hard drive storage has fallen from $500 per Terabyte to $10 per Terabyte.

In other words: file transfer speeds grow by 40% per year, while hard drive costs have fallen by 20% per year. At that pace, by 2050 AD, Netflix's entire database would cost $10 total in disk space, and take 10 minutes to download.

Given those numbers, why wouldn't streaming companies eventually rely upon Redundant Data Storage? The benefits would be as enumerable as the costs would be negligible.

The only question remaining is: when will this happen? In answer to which I would say: some time between now and the distant future. Any more accurate a prediction would require the skills of a soothsayer.