Speed Required To Stream Live Tv

[Chivas]

I have heard many conflicting speeds mentioned, but would be grateful for any concrete information from you guys "On the ground"

[colinthailand20005]

It would depend on the quality you require, if you are using BBC IPlayer, then 1.5mbps should easily cover it, I use Expatshield VPN to watch UK tv, and during the day & evening in Thailand, it is not good enough to watch it live streaming but after 1 or 2am its watchable, it will differ depending what VPN you use.

My internet is True Move 3G and I get 6.5mbps nearly all the time, to Thai & international sites.

[Chivas]

It would depend on the quality you require, if you are using BBC IPlayer, then 1.5mbps should easily cover it, I use Expatshield VPN to watch UK tv, and during the day & evening in Thailand, it is not good enough to watch it live streaming but after 1 or 2am its watchable, it will differ depending what VPN you use.

My internet is True Move 3G and I get 6.5mbps nearly all the time, to Thai & international sites.

Yes have Expatshield likewise and have activated it here in the UK but am able to watch streaming BBC and Sky through a very slow 1.1mbps (theres a problem with the entire terrace of houses where I live) but only very occasional does it buffer.

Hence the question how low can it go ??

[Pib]

"Consistent/constant" speed is a key to streaming video. When watching the speed/bandwidth, say during the download of a file from an international site, it's common here in Thailand to see the speed drop really low for a few seconds, then shoot up for a few seconds, then maintain an even speed for a few seconds, then drop really low, then shoot up, etc...etc...etc. A lot of this is due to the many hops/servers a connection must relay through between Thailand and farangland. While a speed test result may say you had a download speed to the US, Europe, etc., of say 4Mb (or a lot more), that 4Mb "average", repeat, average, most likely involved repeated bursts of speed and dead stops...such stop-and-go bits & bytes flow results in streaming video which pauses a lot. So, it's not only what is the minimum speed required; it also the need for consistent/constant flow. And of course getting an accurate speed test result to most international website can be hard to do since some of the Thai ISPs seem to cache the program's on in-Thailand servers which gives faster-than-light ping results and download speed results like that server in the farangland was in Bangkok (i.e., false/inaccurate results). Too many internet hops can be a killer for streaming video.

[phazey]

As far as bandwidth for a decent stream, a good 384/512kbps constant d/l rate will do in most cases - it also depends on the source sites codec - for example iplayer does not like to work so well over VPN, but tvcatchup works without a flaw.

What problem i did encounter was contention - try watching say the Formula1 on race day - it's nearly impossible to get a good flowing stream. Also using a VPN does not necessarily use the best route available - as it will look through a server off of the prefered path. Also nowadays most VPN's are blacklisted by the tv providers - thus making that few quid a month worthless.

What i did end up doing was to encode the TV streams myself. I got a freeview decoder for 400 baht, and a Sony location free player for 1200 baht - both from ebay.

These are hooked up to my antenna in UK, and streams through to Thailand (all freeview channels) to a machine i have plugged into my TV. It has full access to the decoders remote control via a little IR dongle - do that means i can also set reminders etc by using the guide. I think it's also the only solution to have access to the red button.

So to answer the OP - about 512k if the conditions are absolutely perfect, and no VPN is used.

I'm on true 6mbit btw.

[Darrel]

I also find that the main problem with streaming from abroad is that the entire connection can just grind to a halt for a few seconds from time to time. This only seems to affect the overseas part of the loop and is, according to tracert, to do with the pipe leaving Thailand. Changing ISPs might help this: at the moment I have no choice as my connection is shared. I get exactly the same problem with ftp transfers and webpages. Local contention is a different matter and whilst real enough it only seems to reduce the overall available download speed in a uniform fashion. iPlayer copes well with this.

I compare this with the connection I had in Europe which provided a rock-solid 6Mbs all day every day with hardly a drop out at all.

My personal preference is just to download complete media files for later playback, and of course iPlayer etc. support this perfectly well. Not for live news though, obviously.

[Pib]

So to answer the OP - about 512k if the conditions are absolutely perfect, and no VPN is used.

I'm on true 6mbit btw.

Yeap, I would agree with the 512Kb/sec. Heck, numerous sites also offer 256Kb or lower streaming video speed. Even though 512Kb is a low speed, unless you can obtain that speed at a "constant/consistent" flow a person will end up with pausing/stopping video streams. Some sites refer to this constant/consistent flow of data a "quality of service (QOS)." Otherwise, it's like using a hose to water the lawn and there is a lot of air in the hose/feeding water supply; all will happen is the hose output will just spit-and-sputter water, then some air, then some water, etc. Consider the water as data flow and the air as no-data flow.