How much bandwidth?

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
06/25/2015 at 15:09 • Filed to: None

Is a reliable 6 mbps adequate for a high quality 720p video stream?

DISCUSSION (15)

jkm7680 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:12

some

HammerheadFistpunch > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:13

Probably, most 720p is encoded between 4 and 8 mbps.

The Dummy Gummy > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:14

It’ll work, but you may get some lag and probably can’t do anything else while watching.

tromoly > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:15

Should be fine, may need to pause a little at the beginning to let it load a bit but should be alright.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > The Dummy Gummy
06/25/2015 at 15:18

I’m okay with that. I’m paying the bill and everyone else can lump it.

The Dummy Gummy > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:24

What I would do if you have a router, limit your port to the Netflix or streaming when you watch. That way they can’t do anything else; otherwise the router will try to prioritize, but won’t be perfect and could give you lag that way too.

http://www.tested.com/tech/2175-how-…

davedave1111 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:25

Uncompressed, 720p is something like 120MBytes per second. You’re looking at some kind of compressed stream, and the question is how much compression is acceptable - or, if you’re not streaming, what kind of compression has been used.

Most web-streaming uses H.264: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPE…

There are different levels of compression which can be applied with it, but Youtube’s 720p is 2.5Mbits/s and that’s pretty typical. So if you’re getting a reliable 4+mb/s connection, you ought to be fine.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > The Dummy Gummy
06/25/2015 at 15:28

I have a sophisticated router — that I understand but little — but I can probably shape the traffic to prioritize certain MAC addresses...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > davedave1111
06/25/2015 at 15:30

This is precisely what I was hoping.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > davedave1111
06/25/2015 at 15:34

I don’t know what the upstream speed is. Uverse promises 6 mbps down and their claim is that the bandwidth is fibre-delivered and guaranteed. My theory is that a solid 6 megabits ought to be adequate for most things. And 720p streams are more than adequate image quality for my needs. (I had an analog television up until a month ago; a 35-inch Sony WEGA Trinitron, which was a fantastic television. I bought a used Panasonic 52-inch plasma for $200 with the mount. 720p is looking FAB right now.)

The Dummy Gummy > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 15:36

That’d probably be your best bet, just kick them all off and limit to one MAC address or throttle everyone haha. You could be the TWC of your home.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > The Dummy Gummy
06/25/2015 at 15:40

Sounds like fun, actually...

davedave1111 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 16:10

I didn’t mention upstream - you replied to me twice, so maybe one was misdirected?

If it’s fibre, then 6Mbits should be rock solid at 5.9-6.1 (maybe even a tad higher if you’re lucky). I have fibre and it’s great, although UK internet’s a completely different market - I pay something like Ł25 a month for a connection that’s fast enough I’m not sure what they’re actually giving me these days - I think 40-50Mbits, maybe only 30, but whatever it is, it’s faster than my wireless router. I reliably get 2 MBytes/s sitting in bed, so that does me - it means a typical TV series episode will download completely in under 5 minutes, for example.

At 6Mbits/s you’re going to notice download times a lot more, because you’re much closer to the bandwidth per second of the compressed video. There’s something to be said for it if you can pay a little extra and get much faster speeds from your fibre provider. If it’s a big increase, though, you ought to be fine with streaming or downloading in advance - after all, a bit of extra hard disk space doesn’t cost much.

Clown Shoe Pilot > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/25/2015 at 23:10

Depends on the codec. H.264, you’re golden. MPEG-2, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Luckily, nearly everyone uses H.264 these days. The only reason I have any MPEG-2 on my network is because most TVs (without a set top box) don’t grok H.264 and I HAVE to have MPEG-2 that then gets modulated onto the RF distribution network.

As a comparison, coming straight off the satellite H.264, a typical DirecTV channel is around 5 Mbps @ 1080i. That same channel transcoded to MPEG-2 is 15 Mbps.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Clown Shoe Pilot
06/26/2015 at 01:39

You swam my head with that reply but I think I get the drift.