Will moving to Ultra Fast improve streaming speed / picture quality?

james00744

I'm currently with Talk Talk at approx 40 Mbps - if I switch to a much faster speed of 450-500 Mbps, will the streaming quality improve, and things such as buffering disappear?

Or is anything higher than 40 Mbps pointless with regards to streaming as it's already fast enough?

iniltous

Depends, 40Mb is more than sufficient to watch a UHD video on demand, ( 25Mb is the minimum requirement ) so in that regard your speed it already OK ,  will it be noticeable you changing to FTTP and 500 /900Mb  ?, possibly, it depends on how good or bad your TT ‘connection actually is , the sync speed of 40Mb isn’t necessarily all that helpful, you shouldn’t really have buffering on genuine sources like Netflix etc on a 40Mb service , if you do , it could indicate congestion within TT that is unrelated to the sync speed of 40Mb .

TBH , hyper fast broadband speeds are not necessarily noticeable if you watch one thing at a time or don’t download massive files , if however , several users are all on line at the same time , it will make a difference, for example on your current service you couldn’t watch 2 UHD sources simultaneously , but then again you may never need to do that .

james00744

iniltous said:

Depends, 40Mb is more than sufficient to watch a UHD video on demand, ( 25Mb is the minimum requirement ) so in that regard your speed it already OK ,  will it be noticeable you changing to FTTP and 500 /900Mb  ?, possibly, it depends on how good or bad your TT ‘connection actually is , the sync speed of 40Mb isn’t necessarily all that helpful, you shouldn’t really have buffering on genuine sources like Netflix etc on a 40Mb service , if you do , it could indicate congestion within TT that is unrelated to the sync speed of 40Mb .

TBH , hyper fast broadband speeds are not necessarily noticeable if you watch one thing at a time or don’t download massive files , if however , several users are all on line at the same time , it will make a difference, for example on your current service you couldn’t watch 2 UHD sources simultaneously , but then again you may never need to do that .

Thanks for your reply.

Ok, so the buffering only happens with football.

If I watch Prime, Netflix, series etc, it's fine. No problem.

What is also surprising: My older TV buffers LESS than my newer TV!

Rodders53

Exactly what stream (football) source or sources is it??

Old TV may be max 720p or even lower resolution. 
New TV may doing UHD? 
That's then comparing chalk with cheese.

If streaming and watching on both sets simultaneously that may be the cause of exceeding the download bitrate available...

$ky HD football streams have been criticised on other forums (DSpy, for example) for pixilation and low bitrate type issues but not buffering that I have seen.

M25

40MBPS is rubbish if you want 4K material on YouTube and especially 4K 30/60FPS. YouTube won't even offer it. People who have slow connections obviously won't know that.

As for Netflix and similar they'll adjust the quality to fit your speeds ie you're paying for something and not getting the full streaming quality.

I do a lot of streaming so 150MBPS is the minimum I would want. I have tried 80MBPS and it was OK most of the time but I couldn't have 2 devices doing something at the same time.

I have gigabit (900MBPS actually) and when that contract runs out I'll move to 500MBPS if they don't give me a deal.

No buffering ever.

Neil49

You really need to use a phone app to check the actual speed of your connection. I doubt you are getting the full 40.

I find Meteor quite good. 

james00744

Neil49 said:

You really need to use a phone app to check the actual speed of your connection. I doubt you are getting the full 40.

I find Meteor quite good. 

I use Speedtest. It's giving 42.

Rob5342

Which streaming service are you watching the football on and is anyone else streaming at the same time?

wild666

james00744 said:

I'm currently with Talk Talk at approx 40 Mbps - if I switch to a much faster speed of 450-500 Mbps, will the streaming quality improve, and things such as buffering disappear?

Or is anything higher than 40 Mbps pointless with regards to streaming as it's already fast enough?

If you get 40Mb download speeds then that's enough to stream without any buffering even streaming at the top speeds for UHD only requires 25Mb speeds.

400ixl

If you do upgrade, do it with a better company than TalkTalk, along with Vodafone and Shell (although that is now TalkTalk underneath) they are bottom feeders for quality and service with broadband.

40mbps should be more than enough for most streaming, if it is working fine for most services then it is likely the source rather than the bandwidth, although sports does need more as it doesn't cache as much due to the real time nature.

Chickereeeee

Most TVs only have 100Mbps capable Ethernet sockets anyway. If you have very good WiFi, you may get more that way.