What kind of video quality is 3000Kbps

cymatty · 25 Oct 2010 at 19:27

Hi

I am looking at buying a online video service (NBA) that streams at 3000Kbps, at the moment I am stuck on my mobile dongle so I can only use the 400Kbps option. However I am going to soon get a broadband connection. I have tried to find out what rates Iplayer and Sky player are with no luck.

I want to put the video through my 32" TV, will the quality rate be ok to do this?

Thanks.

Spektor · 25 Oct 2010 at 19:31

It's either very poor quality being buffered very quickly or roughly 720p.

doofer · 25 Oct 2010 at 19:38

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics says 3500kbps for HDTV.

Werewolf · 25 Oct 2010 at 19:42

How long is a bit of string

It all depends on the codecs in use, i'd guess with modern codecs it'll probably be fairly high quality.

Energize · 25 Oct 2010 at 19:50

Codec, resolution? Bandwidth alone is useless.

cymatty · 25 Oct 2010 at 20:09

Energize said:
Codec, resolution? Bandwidth alone is useless.

Well resolution will be the resolution of the tv 1336x768

Codec, not sure it is hard to find on the net, just gives me lots of warez, it is using flash if that helps at all.

Rroff · 25 Oct 2010 at 20:14

Well "proper" DVD quality is usually around 5-6Mbit/s.

QlimaxUK · 25 Oct 2010 at 20:27

cymatty said:
Hi

I am looking at buying a online video service (NBA) that streams at 3000Kbps, at the moment I am stuck on my mobile dongle so I can only use the 400Kbps option. However I am going to soon get a broadband connection. I have tried to find out what rates Iplayer and Sky player are with no luck.

I want to put the video through my 32" TV, will the quality rate be ok to do this?

Thanks.

i don't really pay attention to the kbps, i let my eyes do the quality check

i sometimes run iplayer onto my pc and i find that good quality, i don't bother streaming/downloading HD as it is too big and not really much better to watch then standard DVD quality

Werewolf · 25 Oct 2010 at 20:30

Rroff said:
Well "proper" DVD quality is usually around 5-6Mbit/s.

But that is the now quite old MPEG2 codec, and the quality on a good DVD can quite easily reach 7-9Mb/s*

(my old player had an option to display bitrate and i'd look at times if the quality was really low, or really good).

By comparison the same sort of quality with a more modern (and cpu intensive) codec at the same resolution might be half or less the bit rate.

*The maximum is 12Mb/s from memory, but with some content you can go down to about 3-4Mbit and it still be good for short periods.

cymatty · 25 Oct 2010 at 21:03

The codec appears to be Codec: x264

King85 · 25 Oct 2010 at 22:32

cymatty said:
Hi

I am looking at buying a online video service (NBA) that streams at 3000Kbps, at the moment I am stuck on my mobile dongle so I can only use the 400Kbps option. However I am going to soon get a broadband connection. I have tried to find out what rates Iplayer and Sky player are with no luck.

I want to put the video through my 32" TV, will the quality rate be ok to do this?

Thanks.

How much will that cost? If you have sky or the like have you considered getting the espn package which granted doesn't have all of the nba games on but does come with espn america and espn hd and always have tonnes of college games on which are just as good as the nba to watch.

Monkeynut · 25 Oct 2010 at 22:38

cymatty said:
The codec appears to be Codec: x264

x264 is the best encoder for the best video format, H264. So it will look very nice.

Phil99 · 25 Oct 2010 at 23:01

At a guess it should at least rival standard definition stuff through Freeview, so easily enough to be acceptable on a 32" LCD

Psymonkee · 25 Oct 2010 at 23:02

Been playing around with the free preview (and watching the heartbreaker loss for the Rockets@Dallas last week

) and capped this image:

It's not amazing quality but it's a lot better than any streams on game night and with English commentary too. I'm seriously considering the package and watching the games on demand the day after (or pulling an all nighter if need be

)

(That's the screen maxed at 1920*1200) i normally plays in a window like:

Certainly very watchable in either format

Rozzy85 · 25 Oct 2010 at 23:21

3000Kbps seems a reasonable bitrate for that resolution and codec. Live sports will suffer more anyway due to fast motion and being encoded in a single pass.

For caparison:

Freeview (PAL, 544x576 to 720x576): 1.6-4Mbps, very rarely goes higher than 5.
DVD (PAL, 720x576): 2-9Mbps (Max 12).
Blu-ray (1920x1080): 16-30Mbps, varies on codec.

You've also got audio to which never really gets taken into account.

cymatty · 26 Oct 2010 at 00:02

Psymonkee said:
Been playing around with the free preview (and watching the heartbreaker loss for the Rockets@Dallas last week ) and capped this image:

Certainly very watchable in either format

Thanks for that, looks pretty decent.

Certainly a step up from the 400Kbps I was watching the lakers game at.

I am also tempted to buy the package, it will be great with the added android app so can catch up with the games on wifi. I think its a shame that it blocks the half time show and adverts as American adverts are always cringe-worthy.

King85 said:
How much will that cost? If you have sky or the like have you considered getting the espn package which granted doesn't have all of the nba games on but does come with espn america and espn hd and always have tonnes of college games on which are just as good as the nba to watch.

No sky I am afraid, it costs £96 for the regular season which runs until april, not too bad for 1240 games.