HD streaming

What download speed do I need for full HD 1080p streaming?

Depends on codecs and compression

but

I think its like

nextflix - 7Mb/s
youtube - (depends on uploader) usually between 10-12Mb/s

other services im not so sure about

FYI standard bluray is around 18Mb/s


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_video#H...

Edited by epyon (Tue 24-Mar-15 00:36:47)

Ta.

5 Mbps should be enough

I believe Netflix's "Super HD" (1080p) is 5800kbps, so 6meg should be enough for that, but as above it depends where you're streaming it from

Standard Netflix HD will run in 5 Mbps, and super needs HD is more but will only play if bandwidth available

I'm not sure what Netflix's definition of HD and SuperHD is, I was under the impression HD = 720 and Super HD was 1080.

House is "Super HD" and these are the video quality options I have, seems to only go to 5800

http://i.imgur.com/vZIYVsU.jpg

In reply to a post by Mark07:

I'm not sure what Netflix's definition of HD and SuperHD is, I was under the impression HD = 720 and Super HD was 1080.

1080p is usually called Full HD, not Super HD.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by Mark07:

I'm not sure what Netflix's definition of HD and SuperHD is, I was under the impression HD = 720 and Super HD was 1080.

1080p is usually called Full HD, not Super HD.

Usually, but not in Netflix's terms it seems, apparently both are 1080P but Super HD is somehow a better 1080P... http://www.netflixfixer.com/2013/03/6-things-you-sho...

In reply to a post by Mark07:

Usually, but not in Netflix's terms it seems, apparently both are 1080P but Super HD is somehow a better 1080P... http://www.netflixfixer.com/2013/03/6-things-you-sho...

Yeah, Netflix made up the term themselves to mean Full HD with a higher Netflix bitrate than their normal bitrate. A TV screen resolution for instance has no concept of bitrate, 1080p is 1080p (Full HD).

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 24-Mar-15 13:19:20)

This is a more believable link

In reference to blog.streamingmedia.com/2013/09/netflix-doubles-video-quality-makin...:

Previously, Netflix highest quality video, available to those with ISPs not in the Open Connect program, was encoded at 3850Kbps. With SuperHD, video is encoded at 4300Kbps and 5800Kbps and adding the audio bitrate brings SuperHD encodes to about 4.5Mbps and 6.0Mbps

Yep, so 6Mbps should be enough for Super HD streaming on Netflix, assuming nothing else is using the connection of course

Plus that needs to be throughput speed, not sync. Even speedtest results may not be entirely reliable.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Yeah, Netflix made up the term themselves to mean Full HD with a higher Netflix bitrate than their normal bitrate. A TV screen resolution for instance has no concept of bitrate, 1080p is 1080p (Full HD).

Resolution is a good measure when you use uncompressed streams.

Once you use a compressed stream (H264, VC-1 etc) then bitrate is vital.

A 1080p (1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames per second) stream at 3 megabits might look okay on a computer screen or 32" TV but play that onto a 80" projection screen and it will look pretty awful. Bitrate is important, and its why BluRay is high bitrate.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plus that needs to be throughput speed, not sync. Even speedtest results may not be entirely reliable.

Given many ISPs have Netflix caches and speedtests are often outside the ISP network, this is very true.

If you want pure HD at 1080p resolution then you will need something in the order of 3 Gbps or 3000 Mbps

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Once you use a compressed stream (H264, VC-1 etc) then bitrate is vital.

Of course. But creating a myriad of different terms ending in HD to suit any given company's bitrates is only going to confuse customers. Someone might think that "Super HD" has a higher resolution than Full HD/1080p, since super generally means "above", whereas it's just a term Netflix invented for marketing reasons.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Of course. But creating a myriad of different terms ending in HD to suit any given company's bitrates is only going to confuse customers. Someone might think that "Super HD" has a higher resolution than Full HD/1080p, since super generally means "above", whereas it's just a term Netflix invented for marketing reasons.

Agreed, and I think its been ditched on screen, as I've not seen the term for a while. (I'm generally watching through Amazon Fire TV, or a samsung bluray player).

However the terms of HD and higher are a mess. Mostly started by the EU TV standards lot who decided "HD ready" would be 1366x768 and not even 720p (1280x720) - just as nobody was creating content in that standard! Since then each manufacturer, and each shop, has come up with their own term. Madness :-/

Now we have UHD and 4K and similar "better than HD" terms, when more and more people are watching high resolution but low bit rate compressed video. Very little point increasing the resolution until we can increase the bit rate!

Well I just tried this video and it was saturating my 16 mbit connection, note at full screen, in a window it was about 5 meg.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Now we have UHD and 4K and similar "better than HD" terms, when more and more people are watching high resolution but low bit rate compressed video. Very little point increasing the resolution until we can increase the bit rate!

Completely agree. No point in having UHD with a poor bitrate, much better to have full HD with a decent bitrate. But no doubt the marketing men will have their say and can't wait to splash about UHD on their adverts, even if it looks rubbish at a poor bitrate.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Well I just tried this video and it was saturating my 16 mbit connection, note at full screen, in a window it was about 5 meg.

I ran it full screen on my machine, 5 year old Core i7 with a 1920x1200 screen. I saw a peak of 50mbps but it varied from 30 to 48 most of the time.

I'm using the HTML 5 player in Firefox. Its possible the Adobe Flash player could be quite different and pick a more compressed stream.

I'm also using the Task Manager in Windows 7 to estimate network usage.

Edited by jchamier (Tue 24-Mar-15 19:51:40)

Full screen it seems to have a [censored] bit rate even if you force the 1080p stream.

Sure you were not seeing the long buffer up front? Also at 1080p with some codecs some platforms can struggle, move to downscaling 2k or 4k content and it gets worse with dropped frames.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Sure you were not seeing the long buffer up front? Also at 1080p with some codecs some platforms can struggle, move to downscaling 2k or 4k content and it gets worse with dropped frames.

Try the HTML 5 player, rather than the flash player. Uses almost no CPU on my machine, so I assume accelerated by video card, and I have a £20 video card - GeForce 210.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Full screen it seems to have a [censored] bit rate even if you force the 1080p stream.

Huh, looks like I'm only getting a 720p stream option for HD. Do you have a 1080 option?

In reply to a post by Banger:

Well I just tried this video and it was saturating my 16 mbit connection

It shoudn't do, my 16 meg connection handles it fine.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Huh, looks like I'm only getting a 720p stream option for HD. Do you have a 1080 option?

I do.

In the YouTube Flash player I get stats, and the option to use 1080p video. The stats report bitrate of 4282kbps average, at 1920x1080 pixels. I can no longer see the bandwidth being used in task manager, its that low. Occasional spikes and obviously a lot of buffering.

So the answer is to use the Flash Player version of YouTube if you are on a slow connection

Hmm, I'm running the HTML5 player with 1080p. No problems with saturation.

http://s29.postimg.org/6y34m92ev/fiji.png

Btw, not sure why that screen capture reduced to 720p!

12-13Mbps for me at 720p on I.E9

will try when im home from work I guess.

http://postimg.org/image/y8ofu65bn/full/

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Hmm, I'm running the HTML5 player with 1080p. No problems with saturation.

Maybe my Firefox can't cope.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Maybe my Firefox can't cope.

Chrome here, maybe it plays nicer with its stable-mate Youtube.

Network utilisation (1% = 1Mb). Ignore the flatline 1/3 of the way in, that was something else.

http://postimg.org/image/oouux3flv/full/

So if some are seeing 30-50 mbits flash must be rate adapative, here is my rate, seems bursty after initial buffering.

Getting about 11mbps on IE11 presumably HTML5 player.

Edited by Banger (Tue 24-Mar-15 20:22:19)

In reply to a post by Banger:

So if some are seeing 30-50 mbits flash must be rate adapative, here is my rate, seems bursty after initial buffering.

Similar to mine then. Mine was using Task Manager on high refresh speed.

Edit: checked again and the flatline was video related.

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 24-Mar-15 20:36:14)

In reply to a post by Banger:

Getting about 11mbps on IE11 presumably HTML5 player.

Right click on the video and you will see the player. To choose/force you can go to http://www.youtube.com/html5

Tried the HTML5 player and the data use was about the same but screen quality wasnt very smooth for me. Flash was a much smoother full screen playback, but I only have a cheap video card.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Tried the HTML5 player and the data use was about the same but screen quality wasnt very smooth for me. Flash was a much smoother full screen playback, but I only have a cheap video card.

I think Flash does caching.

4.5Mbps is sufficient to play the video you linked at its maximum quality.

Due to the different buffering techniques of players and variable bit rates, the only way to truly know is play full video and see how much data is used.

Snapshots of streaming usage can be deceptive, e.g. some buffer for 30 seconds and then may have a gap with no data received.

I simply checked the average bitrate of the 1080p source file.

As far as I can tell, it is others on this thread who are mistakenly analysing buffer refill speeds, so maybe you should have a word with them.

Just replying to the latest post in the thread

In reply to a post by vimto_girl:

I simply checked the average bitrate of the 1080p source file.

Where can you reliably do that? In the Flash Player youtube "statistics" or the HTML player "statistics" you get different details.

As far as I can tell, it is others on this thread who are mistakenly analysing buffer refill speeds, so maybe you should have a word with them.

Thats as may be, but its unclear when there are two players being used by YouTube and at least 3 different browsers how they all interact.

There are two 1080p source files, I downloaded the bigger and used the file size itself to determine avg video bitrate as a first step in determining sufficient speed.

Umm but that's not the question

If the OP wanted he could just download at and watch

but no hes asking about streaming

which in turn is using more than 4.5mbps due to codecs/compression.

Your post doesn't make any sense. Whether you stream the file, or download the file - the codec, compression and avg bitrate does not change.

In reply to a post by vimto_girl:

Your post doesn't make any sense. Whether you stream the file, or download the file - the codec, compression and avg bitrate does not change.

ISP performance, router performance, congestion, local WiFi etc all get involved too. As I'm aware you know its a rats nest

This wasn't epyon's point though. He claimed (nonsensically) that streaming uses more data than the file itself "due to codecs/compression".

Of course in practice you need some added margin over the file bitrate to prevent buffer underrun when streaming, and I did in fact add this to arrive at 4.5 Mbps.

One of the biggest problems with YouTube is the (paradoxical) situation of poor performing ISP CDNs at peak times. In my experience, it really is the No. 1 problem people suffer with and it is a scandal. Quite rightly, users can't understand why their 80Mbps FTTC connection buffers with YouTube. I block my ISP's YouTube CDN because it can sometimes struggle to deliver >1-2 Mbps, despite a perfect speed to "the internet" and >70 Mbps 1x TBB speedtest at the same time.

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Mar-15 22:59:03)

In reply to a post by vimto_girl:

This wasn't epyon's point though. He claimed (nonsensically) that streaming uses more data than the file itself "due to codecs/compression".

Agreed.

Of course you need some added margin over the file bitrate in practice to prevent buffer underrun when streaming, and I did in fact add this to arrive at 4.5 Mbps.

One of the biggest problems with YouTube is the (paradoxical) situation of poor performing ISP CDNs at peak times. In my experience, it really is the No. 1 problem people suffer with and it is a scandal. Quite rightly, users can't understand why their 80Mbps FTTC connection buffers with YouTube. I block my ISP's YouTube CDN because it can sometimes struggle to deliver >1-2 Mbps, despite a perfect speed to "the internet" and TBB speediest.

YouTube itself is a strange beast. I'm not sure if they have their own CDN boxes in ISPs (like Netflix) or if Google just peer with ISPs into the Google cloud - but yes, you can get times when any YouTube video won't run even on a corporate 100/100 mbps leased line (real fibre, not consumer) connection due to the bank of servers your IP range is routed to having "problems". Its unclear as Google don't like to explain how their kit works.

YouTube streams from servers inside the major ISPs own networks, I have verified this by traffic analysis. You can block them and it will then stream from Google in the US.

Just for info when I was using the Geforce 9500GT video card, the HTML5 video wasnt very smooth. I have received my replacement card but until I get it in wont know what it is as MSI sent me a refurbished card under warranty, but thats another story. Anyway I went out and bought a GT610 and both flash and html5 are now smooth playing on that video but my 2d Windows Experience is 4.2 but was 4.9 with the 9500GT.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Just for info when I was using the Geforce 9500GT video card, the HTML5 video wasnt very smooth. I have received my replacement card but until I get it in wont know what it is as MSI sent me a refurbished card under warranty, but thats another story. Anyway I went out and bought a GT610 and both flash and html5 are now smooth playing on that video but my 2d Windows Experience is 4.2 but was 4.9 with the 9500GT.

Good to know. The 9500 is quite old now, and the GT610 is newer than the card I was using so great news it made a difference