What speed do I need?

How much speed do I really need?

I have 50mbps with Virgin @ £Arm + £Leg/month, so I'm looking at Black Friday offers for alternatives, but with lower mbps. I stream film/tv, don't download - its takes too long, plus with decent streaming why bother. Even with 50mbps I get reloading when watching on some sites eg BBC iplayer.

50Mbps is totally adequate - buffering could be due to local network issues or congestion on the Virgin service.

The BBC say that their encoding rate for HD is 3.2Mbps for the video and 192kbps for audio - so 3.4Mbps total. You should have no problems if your have anything over 5Mbps - provided no one else is using the connection for surfing or email. Anything above 10Mbps should be reasonable and allow other activities to occur when watching a video stream. Obviously if there are 2 people wanting their own stream then you will need twice as much.

50Mb/s should be more than enough for video streaming. Even the 4K Netflix stream doesn't need that much. iPlayer needs only a few Mb/s and should work fine on a connection a fifth the speed of yours (it works fine on all but the slowest ADSL connections).

It sounds to me like congestion on VM's network (which wouldn't be the first time) or else someone else in your house is using the net (a lot). Try running the TBB speed tester (logged in would be best) and see what it shows.

Most streaming video is rate adaptive aswell so if something else is downloading it will lower the quality so not to effect the stream.

Iplayer is odd. If you live stream (rather than catch up stuff) it does buffer now and again. Pretty sure its not my connection as Sky, 4od, itv etc don't do it

Edited by bobble_bob (Mon 23-Nov-15 15:59:27)

Thanks, people. Information useful. Have just been notified by VM that charges now increased to £Arm, £Leg now to include £Firstborn. Going to have to change supplier, any recommendations on who to avoid?

Thanks, people. Information useful. Have just been notified by VM that charges now increased to £Arm, £Leg now to include £Firstborn. Any recommendations on who to avoid?

Which exchange is it please?

Do you have (a redundant) Openreach landline physically connected to the house? (Unused because you have Virgin Media phone?)

Please put your address into this checker and copy and paste the table of estimates, plus the line above it, editing out your address. A tip - on that page just enter the postcode and submit, then you can choose the address from a dropdown list).

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 23-Nov-15 21:35:10)

VM

In reply to a post by MHC:

VM

LOL, agreed

Paul