IP TV and bandwidth allowance

[stevenrw]

More and more TV's are now offering iptv portals where you can stream movies, often in HD from a huge online library. Prior to buying a new tv and/or possibly migrating from IDnet ADSL2+ to IDNet FTTC, I have three questions...

Does streaming movies (or clips from Youtube for that matter) eat into bandwidth allowance. I'm unclear if streaming (as opposed to downloading) stuff is actually classed as bandwidth usage.

Does anybody have first hand experience of these portals and how do thay perform

Lastly, with a download speed (ADSL2+) of between 6 and 7 mbps am I going to get what the trade would call "a good viewing experience" or do I really need FTTC for the full effect on a 32" set. Am I going to get pixellation at peak times for example.

[Rik]

Streaming is just another download, Steven, and video takes big bites out of your bandwidth allowance, particularly if the programme is in HD.

Your current speed should be adequate, but, obviously, the faster the better - particularly as TV evolves. You shouldn't see pixellation at all, the worst you could expect is repeated buffering if the speed isn't fast enough.

[Bill]

Can't really help with the use of iptv portals but from an ISP's point of view, the word "download" just defines the direction of data transfer, nothing more. What you (or your computer) does with it when it arrives is not their problem!

In fact I don't think they can even tell.

So everything that arrives at your modem is "download"... from several GB of HD movie down to a 50-byte ping packet.

I'd think that 6-7Mbps should be OK for streamed HD video, provided it doesn't drop too far for too long. I think about 2Mbps is reckoned as the absolute minimum¹, but I could be wrong on that.

The size of your set doesn't matter by the way- only the HD resolution the video is sent at. The highest (hence requiring the widest bandwidth and eating your allowance the quickest) is 1080p.


¹ edit- and I think that's only for 720i

[esh]

Hi. As pointed out above, streaming video does count towards your bandwidth allowance.

A *non* HD video of about 45 minutes will be ~ 350 MB.

An HD (720p) video of about 45 minutes will be ~ 1.2 GB = 1200 MB.

An HD (1080p) video is pretty rare, and I think 45 minutes of that will probably be anywhere up to 3GB = 3000 MB. It may be a little less.

At an on-peak bandwidth of 40GB on ADSL1 this means I can watch just over 30 HD episodes in a month, or one a day. Alternatively I can watch 114 non-HD episodes or 3 a day.

[stevenrw]

Thanks everybody for taking the time. The info you supplied was very useful because if I do decide to upgrade to FTTC with IDNet, the cheapest option is all I could afford/justify and that has obvious bandwidth restrictions that would come into play should I use the iptv.