In reply to a post by dieselglider:

15gb/month is very low for TV streaming.

Depends what you call very low, 15GB = approx 45hrs streaming from the likes of TVcatchup. But you don't need Pro to stream tv, Unlimited will stream just as well.

Are you sure?

I just watched E4 for five minutes using TVCatchup and on average my bandwidth was 1684Kb.
A Wireshark capture shows TvCatchup streaming from 84.234.22.100.
This IP belongs to NetrinoUK, who utilise Level 3. Plusnet throttle Level 3 to between 756Kbps-512Kbps during the evening on 'Unlimited'.
It would be interesting to see how well TVCatchup streams on a half a Mb connection, less than 1/3 of it's average bandwidth during this test.

It streams on my desktop at a steady 750-800kbps, which I believe is the rated bandwidth, and I left it streaming for one hour which used up about 350MB.

For some reason, on my laptop, the streaming tends to vary between 1 to 3Mbps, which I find a bit strange, and it's slightly jerky too, but that may be limited ram, processor issue.

edit: There is a guy on the plusnet forum, who specifically changed product to Unlimited for the very purpose of streaming TVcatchup, and not having to worry about the bandwidth usage, he seems happy enough with the performance.

Edited by dieselglider (Tue 03-Mar-09 12:44:17)

PN prioritise streaming. The fact that it comes from Level 3 doesn't/shouldn't matter as PN can differentiate between the different types of traffic coming from Level 3.

You pre-empted my next query. I noticed 'download servers' are classed as gold plated but streaming is gold.

I fail to see how this is unacceptable throttling... It's a bit like saying a 2nd class post letter took 4 days to get to the destination... The task you were performing is not time critical, therefore it took longer. Nothing stopped working whilst this was being performed and nothing went wrong.. It was an incidental job that you won't have to do very often and therefore won't notice again..

In reply to a post by eps:

I fail to see how this is unacceptable throttling... It's a bit like saying a 2nd class post letter took 4 days to get to the destination... The task you were performing is not time critical, therefore it took longer. Nothing stopped working whilst this was being performed and nothing went wrong.. It was an incidental job that you won't have to do very often and therefore won't notice again..

He switched the computer on, fully intending to use it, but couldn't use it for 2.5 hours. That IS unacceptable throttling.
It's like saying you switched on the TV but couldn't use it for 2.5 hours,
or you started your car but couldn't drive it for 2.5 hours,
or you tried to flush the loo but couldn't for 2.5 hours.

Did Yves say that he/she couldn't use the computer whilst it was doing the updates? (that's an honest question). Generally on Windows I carry on doing things whilst the updates are downloading and installing and it doesn't make much difference to what I'm doing. Some updates may have a bigger impact which may be the case here?

I switched the computer on, expected to complete the updates in 30 minutes then switch off and go out. However, my departure was delayed by two hours by the throttling.

In reply to a post by Yves:

I switched the computer on, expected to complete the updates in 30 minutes then switch off and go out. However, my departure was delayed by two hours by the throttling.

Why not go out and finish when you got back?