What is good speed of broadband?

SlipHook

I have been researching around the net and most places say anywhere between 28 (which is apparently average mbs in UK) to 38 mbs. Would 38 mbs be very fast for downloading, watching youtube videos (quick buffer times) in full 1080p and so on?

molerat

Those speeds are for fibre and not plain ADSL. I have only a 6 download speed and can stream HD to 2 devices with no buffering.

lee111s

I've watched 1080p videos on a 6meg connection.

Internet speed is not the only factor. What codecs being used play a massive part.

My new house only gets 2.5meg (BT FTTC in the build process) and I can watch stuff in 720p using the H.265 codec without and real issues. Worst case I sometimes let the cache build up 100meg or so and it's perfect through to the end of the show with no buffering.

[Deleted User]

That's like asking how long is a piece of string really.

What exactly would you use it for?

Mr.Generous

I was going to say buffering is a thing of the past, broadband just plays stuff. I just ran speedtest.net and got 45.73 MBPS download on wireless, Virgin fibre really ain't bad!

Mister_G

Mr.Generous wrote: »

I was going to say buffering is a thing of the past, broadband just plays stuff. I just ran speedtest.net and got 45.73 MBPS download on wireless, Virgin fibre really ain't bad!

Not if you're on sub 2Mb ADSL and no Virgin (fibre) in sight!

J_B

Mister_G wrote: »

Not if you're on sub 2Mb ADSL and no Virgin (fibre) in sight!

This!

(ten characters)

Pincher

I would say 5Mbps is all I need, even now. If I'm not sharing the broadband.

EE non-fibre, ADSL2+ was giving 13Mbps. Plenty of broadband for a normal household.

I am giving Virgin a try again, because of the Tivo V6 box, and I'm curious about 200Mbps. I really don't need the 200Mbps, I now know for sure.

forgotmyname

I managed fine on a sub 4Mb connection, but there again i managed fine on a 0.5Mb connection, and yet again managed fine on a 56k connection.

1080 at fully uncompressed bandwidth your going to need in excess of a 60Mb connection to have a chance of getting a buffer free film.

If its compressed then a fraction of that will be adequate. If you can get a 90 minute 1080 film in 2.4Gb or less than a 4Mb connection will be fine.

As a guideline youtube's quality is utter crap. they compress the crap out of your video file.
Thats why users upload as a 4k video. Its not actually 4k but it gives the user more bandwidth to play with.

Try this... http://forgotmyname.50webs.com/MSE124/

Same picture at 3 different file sizes. The one on the right is less than one tenth of the original size. The one on the right just loses detail. Youtube works like that.

But all pictures are exactly the same physical size if you printed them.

These pictures are exactly 1/4 the size of a 1080 picture. (or should be)

editor1

I'm none too sure why you desire to stream media at full HD, when 720p is more than enough, unless your LCD panel is more than 55in, in which case you may notice a difference in resolution. As such, if you can get a regular ASDL connection speed of approx. 6Mb you'd have no issues with 720P, further, it may pay to actually download first and then watch - on a 6Mb connection you can DL a DVD quality programme in about 90 mins, that's just over 4GB, again, SD and 720P downloads are quicker and again, any differences in TV resolution are only really noticeable if you have a big panel.
Given I don't have a TV ariel and any media I watch is downloaded from the Internet, I usually only DL SD media if its TV and 720p if its movies - all play fine on my 46in LCD TV, and will do so unless I have a huge monitor, namely 55in and above, in which case you'd notice the jump between SD/720 and 1080p - don't watch much You Tube and iPlayer works fine on regular ASDL service.

Pincher

https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/tv/v6.html

"Experience mesmerising 4K Ultra HD
4K Ultra HD is here, and boy oh boy, it looks good. Experience Netflix (if you’re subscribed) and YouTube in 4K Ultra HD2."

On Demand and Catchup work through the Media Hub (aka Wi-Fi modem/router), which is rather unsettling, as you can't get TV without the broadband. Well, you can watch TV, and record it, but not the functions that require download.


http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/uhd/

If Sky does UHD channels, like football, the customer will need to have fibre broadband for any On Demand feature.