I think engadget misunderstood Panasonic's press release, which refers to the "Cinemascope issue", meaning the issue for all home theaters that Cinemascope is 2.35:1 and HD video is 16:9.

One of the improvements of the AE4000 over the AE3000 is 6 lens memory settings (instead of 3), and auto-detection and switching for 2.35:1 and 16:9 aspect ratio material.

The red "commercials" on Medium looks wrong. There didn't actually have like 25 commercial breaks, a few seconds each, did they?

Note that their upload speeds are relatively low. For example, their $190/mo plan with 15Mbps down has only 1Mbps up. This indicates to me that they are making assumptions that their customers will not all saturate their download bandwidth continuously and at the same time. In other words, speakeasy has their own leased lines to connect their customers to the Internet, but it is obvious that speakeasy does not have enough bandwidth in those lines to support all of their customers continuously and simultaneously saturating their download bandwidth. So, there is an implicit cap on the download, probably around that of the upload, if everyone tried to utilize 100% of their allotted bandwidth. If speakeasy buys 1 DS3 for every 45 Onelink ADSL2 customers, then that could be saturated by 3 customers at 15Mbps continuous, or by 40 customers averaging 500kbps continuously and 5 customers averaging 5000kbps continuously.
In the latter case, the 500kbps customers are heavily subsidizing the 5000kbps customers.

I'm interested in numbers. What are speakeasy's numbers? What bandwidth are they selling, and at what rates?

Let's look at some numbers.

I don't have Time-Warner broadband (I have Cox), but I just measured my
bandwidth on speedtest.net and I obtained

down: 12500 kbps (small b for bits per second rather than Bytes per second)
up: 5100 kbps

Now, there are 2629800 seconds in a month (on average), so if I
saturated my line constantly at those rates, it would be theoretically
possible for me to download 4000 GB per month and upload 1600 GB per
month (big B for Bytes, I converted bits to Bytes and reduced the number
slightly for overhead).

At that usage, if I were on a Time-Warner capped connection, I would
obviously hit the price ceiling of $150/month.

For comparison, a T-1 line is symmetrical 1544 kbps, so 4 T-1 lines
would give me slightly more upstream bandwidth and significantly less
downstream bandwidth than my cable modem. A DS3 (T-3) line is 44736
kbps, so I would be using about 28% of a DS3 for download, and 11% for
upload.

Coverting from monthly volume to bandwidth, here are some average
bandwidth numbers for various caps, assuming the line is constantly
saturated:

10GB : 32 kbps
60GB : 191 kbps
100GB : 319 kbps
250GB : 797 kbps

Let's look at Time Warner's rates, guesstimating a bit since the rates
quoted in the article were not precise.

10GB, 32kbps : $25/month
60GB, 191kbps : $65/month
100GB, 319kbps : $75/month
125GB, 478kbps : $100/month ($75/month base plus 25GB at $1/GB)
175GB, 558kbps : $150/month ($75/month base plus 75GB at $1/GB)

and anything higher than 175GB hits the price ceiling of $150/month.

So, if we were to cut out the middle-man and go straight to the carriers
for a T-1 or DS3 line, how do the rates compare?

It is time consuming to get an actual rate quote from the carriers, but
I am familiar with the prices for T-1 lines and DS3 lines. They vary
widely, but the lowest prices I have ever seen are around $300/month for
a T-1 and $3000/month for a DS3 (in many areas it could be double that)

Time-Warner's 100GB / 319 kbps service is about 20% of a T-1, so if
you got 5 friends together and shared a T-1, and you were able to find
one for $300/mo, then you would be paying $60/mo for what Time-Warner
is charging $75/mo. But the intallation charges for a T-1 are usually
several thousand dollars, and you usually have to pay for the network
equipment (a lot more than you would for a cable modem).

For higher-volume customers, the comparison looks a lot different. With
my example, 5100kbps upload, that is 4 T-1 lines, so about $1200/mo
vs. $150/mo from Time Warner. Even if I shared 11% of a DS3 line with
9 friends, it would be $333 per month to get 5100kbps direct from a
carrier, versus still $150/mo from Time-Warner. And my downloads would
be more than double that 5100kbps with cable broadband.

One last set of numbers: profitability for Time-Warner (TWX) for 2004
- 2008. I like to look at return on assets (ROA) since it doesn't
complicate the picture with leverage. Here are the ROA numbers for TWX
for the last 5 years:

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2.5% 2.2% 5.1% 3.3% -10.8%

Even ignoring the 2008 number, the Time-Warner investors would have made
more money "investing" their cash in a bank CD or a T-Bill! So it is not
like Time-Warner is getting rich charging prices much higher than their
costs of providing service.

I am astounded that people are blaming Comcast for this.

Isn't it obvious that the problem is corrupt politicians on the city council? If Verizon wants to cable the city for FiOS, why the heck would the council members not allow it? Isn't their job to serve their citizens?