why change to fibre?

A very basic question. I currently have downlaod speeds of about 5.5mbs - I use less than 10gb download per month - I only stream music and TV catch up like bbciplayer.
So with all the hype of getting onto the fibre broadband bandwaggon, apart from faster download speed, what benifit would I get from switching to fibre? It will cost £12 per month extra!
Thanks

The extra speed may mean you have less buffering on iPlayer, particularly if playing HD content
Also line may be more stable.

You can get up to 20Mbps upload bandwidth, which means sending photos for processing is easier for example.

Buffering has been mentioned.

Do you have any problems like that, however small, with anything you do? Any instability on the conenction?

If not, save your money .

And - is there only you using it?

Provided you do not try to watch an HD film on BBCs iPlayer and download some images at the same time you should just about be OK.

The BBC recommendation is for a 3500 kbps connection to run HD. So you should not see any pauses whilst buffering - startup whilst it initially buffers some content will be a little slower but nothing significant or annoyingly noticeable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics is worth running to see what the results are.

In reply to a post by MHC:

The BBC recommendation is for a 3500 kbps connection to run HD. So you should not see any pauses whilst buffering - startup whilst it initially buffers some content will be a little slower but nothing significant or annoyingly noticeable.

But amazingly the Sky box manages 1.2GB an hour which is a tad under 700kb/s - and it looks very good. Pretty much broadcast quality. I don't normally use catch-up but have been playing with the Sky box recently and I'm astounded how good HD can look at low bit-rates.

Sky box on BBC iplayer 2.7GB for HD one hour, and certainly I do see films around that size.

Bit rates vary according to content, and I can tell difference if I look closely, but then used to write encoders so know where to spot flaws

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Bit rates vary according to content, and I can tell difference if I look closely, but then used to write encoders so know where to spot flaws

Youngster! I work on the design and development of a digital standards converter - PAL/SECAM/NTSC. Went from analog, to a series of digital frame stores and then back to analog again. And it was certainly not small.

You've made my day

In reply to a post by loggie:

A very basic question. I currently have downlaod speeds of about 5.5mbs - I use less than 10gb download per month - I only stream music and TV catch up like bbciplayer.
So with all the hype of getting onto the fibre broadband bandwaggon, apart from faster download speed, what benifit would I get from switching to fibre? It will cost £12 per month extra!
Thanks

Depends what you use your broadband for at the end of the day. if you got a family and lots of devices connected to the net then the extra bandwidth is useful

I could cope with 5 megabits, in fact I coped with less, but when I had a chance to got to a different system that would offer me 5megabits i went for it. i now got 10 megabits from the same system.

If i could have got 5 megabits on ADSL then i would have stayed with ADS,L, that is enough for netflix at SD and also for BBc I player as long as you don't use the net for anything else at the same time.


If you don't want to watch HD content and you can cope with what you got then stay with what you have got, no one is forcing you to get fibre, well not yet anyway.

fibre around here was pretty close to being completed when i changed from ADSL to what I am on now, i could have waited, but I don't think I need 40 megabits.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Sky box on BBC iplayer 2.7GB for HD one hour, and certainly I do see films around that size.

Yeah my mistake when creating the post. That 1.2GB should have been 2.4GB. It works out at 800kb/s as I originally wrote though. Very impressive.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by MHC:

The BBC recommendation is for a 3500 kbps connection to run HD. So you should not see any pauses whilst buffering - startup whilst it initially buffers some content will be a little slower but nothing significant or annoyingly noticeable.

But amazingly the Sky box manages 1.2GB an hour which is a tad under 700kb/s - and it looks very good. Pretty much broadcast quality. I don't normally use catch-up but have been playing with the Sky box recently and I'm astounded how good HD can look at low bit-rates.

Don't forget the downloads are compressed AV files so the actual file size doesn't have a bearing on the actual video bitrate. The average video bitrate, IIRC, is around 8-10 Mbps for Sky's HD On Demand content compared to around 3 Mbps for iPlayer HD content.

For comparison: the HD iPlayer file from the iPlayer website for last week's Strictly is 1.1GB compared to the 4.51GB via iPlayer on Sky's On Demand service.

Sky use progressive download rather than streaming for all On Demand content because it works the on pretty much any connection whether it's >100Kbps or 20 Mbps, the programme just takes longer to become available to watch on a slow connection.

With greater speed and data volume your use of the service will change and expand.
At the moment your usage is limited by the amount of data you can receive in a sensible amount of time. If you had a faster service your usage would expand to fill the availability.

I used to exist quite happily on bog standard ADSL (and before that on Dial up) but now on FTTC I have greatly exceeded my usage volumes of the past.

Very true.

I've gone up from 3GB pm to 7GB pm .

"Don't forget the downloads are compressed AV files"

All video formats are compressed, even the production phase 225 Mbps bit rate or lower is used, raw HD is around 1.6Gbps

Very little to no content on the Sky HD on demand is available that uses a bit rate of 8 to 10 Mbps for the video, that would equate to a file size in the 5 to 6GB range.

Or are you suggesting that Sky somehow are compressing this 5 to 6GB files into 2 to 3GB downloads? Which is not what happens, as the video compression to go from broadcast quality masters has already compressed the that, most video files if you try to compress a second time only give a gain of 1-2%, unless you resample the actual video frames. Which in turn reduces the video bitrate.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Very true.
I've gone up from 3GB pm to 7GB pm .

Sounds like you're an AAISP user My usage is on average about 30GB a month, peaking at 50GB. Not really changed from BE 14meg to BT FTTC 40meg, just much less waiting on my uploads

Lol, actually I'm very wrong. It's not as impressive as I thought. It's 700KBps which is 5.6Mb/s - now it makes sense

Edited by Andrue (Sat 10-Nov-12 21:34:44)

In reply to a post by DRW:

With greater speed and data volume your use of the service will change and expand.
At the moment your usage is limited by the amount of data you can receive in a sensible amount of time. If you had a faster service your usage would expand to fill the availability.

Mine hasn't changed much. About 7GB most months. If Sky improved their catch-up so that it reliably had stuff I watch on it then I might start to use it more. But right now I can get everything I want by just knowing how to use the EPG and shifting recordings to avoid clashes.

In any case - with bit rates the way they are who needs high-speed?

> why change to fibre?

The man from Sky who called me said it's warmer in winter too...


(BTW: not touched a drop!)

Hmmm. I thought the Sky was colder in winter?

That is an interesting question. I currently have Be* at a relatively stable 19mb/down 2mb/up and that allows me to do more or less everything at the speed I require. I want FTTC because, well, I'm a geeky person and if I can have 80mb/20mb then why not I doubt it'll change my usage at all.

For the future, things like iPlayer and Sky Anytime+ the quality will be higher with the appropriate bandwidth/speed needed increased accordingly.

The biggest advantage is just those who live relatively far away from the exchange but close to a cabinet and will see their speed jump significantly.

A mate of mine is in the same sort of situation, at the moment via cable and wireless LLU ADSL, he can get 16Mb/s and it is stable and the price is fine, but he is wondering if it is worth going to fibre when he is able to get it. He is a games player.

He may just wait until he moves out and have fibre at the new place where ever he moves to, that will not be until the middle of next year