SD prior to transmission looks better than HD does at home.
HD prior to transmission looks stunning and still good at home.
4K at trade shows is slightly scary with the realism

SD picture quality could be a lot better than it is, just needs bit rates pushing higher rather than resolution.

As far as I'm aware Netflix use both VBR and ABR, so they may encode one 10-second section at 2Mb/s then another at 10Mb/s leaving an average bitrate of 6Mb/s. Smoothing this out is part of what the buffering is for.

It's still delivered as a solid 6mbit/sec stream though. It doesn't go down to 2mbit/sec and then up to 10mbit/sec all the time.

It's twice that now, and that includes everyone who may be browsing or even doing nothing on their connection. It's simply taking the number of active sessions and dividing it by the total bandwidth consumption.

Obviously that's what the stat is - but it shows you how little of the actual capacity is being used. Less than 0.3% - or 0.6% if it has doubled since then, assuming everyone on FTTC has a 60mbit/sec connection on average.

I wasn't aware of a huge increase in consumer bandwidth per user in the late 90s. At that time the Internet was still paid for per minute, most of the new usage was academic and business, and broadband was only just in its infancy in the UK.

Actually, in %age y/y terms the late 90s were by far the biggest increase in consumer bandwidth (in transit and peering) per user. Hence why so many companies went bust in the early 2000s when it became very clear that the 10,000% Y/Y increase wasn't sustainable.

Of course Virgin Media are still seeing a big increase - but 500% in 5 years is still much less than the 10,000% you saw back in the day.

It's a simple fact - the pace of bandwidth usage growth is slowing. Yes, bandwidth use itself is still going up, but it's not going up at the same rate it used to be. That's because there simply isn't the applications that require it.

I find your claim that you can't tell the difference day to day between 3Mb/s ADSL, 3G, 4G and fixed line SFBB churlish and absurd. I can and do quite easily.

Apart from downloading/uploading big files, its hard to tell the difference. DC-HSPA+ when not congested easily delivers sub 75ms pings with low jitter and 10mbit/sec down and 2.5mbit/sec up. If I switch over to WiFi, unless I'm downloading "100 linux isos" I'm not going to see the difference.

BTW - I am not against the rollout of SFBB by any means. I just think that BT have got their rollout spot on. FTTC is more than enough for the near future and has allowed them to serve more houses more quickly.

It's this doom mongering that unless we get every single house in the UK on FTTP the country is doomed because people won't be able to stream 5 4K channels simultaneously that drives me up the walls.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

It's still delivered as a solid 6mbit/sec stream though. It doesn't go down to 2mbit/sec and then up to 10mbit/sec all the time.

I watched something on Netflix early. It wasn't streaming at all, it was filling buffer periodically with bursts.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

Actually, in %age y/y terms the late 90s were by far the biggest increase in consumer bandwidth (in transit and peering) per user. Hence why so many companies went bust in the early 2000s when it became very clear that the 10,000% Y/Y increase wasn't sustainable.

From an incredibly low base. Weren't companies going bust from overspending on network construction in the case of transit and peering and underestimating demand for dial up in the case of the free call ISPs?

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

It's a simple fact - the pace of bandwidth usage growth is slowing. Yes, bandwidth use itself is still going up, but it's not going up at the same rate it used to be. That's because there simply isn't the applications that require it.

LINX appears to disagree, their graphs suggest bandwidth usage growth has accelerated in the past year. We're probably seeing some of the same effect we did from the migration between dial up and xDSL / cable alongside increased prevalence of streaming.

I appreciate that not everyone will need high bandwidth, however it would've been rather nice for the option to be there. What Openreach have done is, for the most part, the bare minimum in terms of quality, we'll see how sustainable it is in the medium term. The financials imply they expect that kit to be delivering our services for a decade or more.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

SD prior to transmission looks better than HD does at home.
HD prior to transmission looks stunning and still good at home.
4K at trade shows is slightly scary with the realism

Who's ever going to want to stand in front of a 4K camera?!

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

...we now have BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV and channel 4 all in full time HD

I can get the channels you listed, plus BBC 3 & 4, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBC News HD and Aljazeera HD. And that's on Freeview HD!

Are you in a low coverage area or something?

Edited by deleted (Wed 05-Mar-14 18:51:07)

The way the buffering works varies across playback platforms and how the content provider also decides to offer stuff....

Some sources do buffer, stop, buffer
Others appear to be a constant stream and evolve the bitrate on the fly

All my TV reception is done via media PCs and I haven't yet purchased a DVB-T2 tuner which is required for free view HD.

In reply to a post by flipdee:

I think you can still get a black and white only tv license.

Last year there were 13,202 B&W TV licences in force apparently so there are still some out there that are OK with it.

I've heard iPlayer in b&w brings a new feel to live shows, especially football matches. Much more engrossing.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

The financials imply they expect that kit to be delivering our services for a decade or more.

Correct, and certainly longer for BDUK cabinets.

But it doesn't have to be delivering *everyone's* services in parallel all the way through that decade. It is certainly possible for the kit to be used by the high-end users in the first few years; they can migrate out to faster equipment as it becomes available, while subscribers further down the digital food-chain will migrate in to FTTC.

The kit stays in use, while the type of subscriber changes...