BBC Stream Quality

BluD · 25 Jun 2016 at 18:13

Hey there, im just watching Glastonbury live stream on BBC website. I've noticed the stream quality seems better than the normal BBC stream, am i just imagining it or have they changed it for Glastonbury?

I've tried watching TV through the web site a few times but the quality wasnt that great, my the TV signal around me is terrible so i dont even bother with normal TV. If it was this good normally i would probably watch it more often.

jpaul · 27 Jun 2016 at 22:18

Subjectively I think the audio production quality is always very good from Glastonbury (maybe the BBC also sell it abroad )

The live radio streams off of the bbc are highest bit rate, radio3 (&proms) always 320kbs/ aac-lc and, I just looked, radio6 which had some live Glastonbury content also at that rate.
I think there were more live broadcast on radio6 last year - the Who was good.

bbc2 hd satellite channel were dedicating 320kb/s to audio which usually corresponds to 5.1 in time slots near glastonbury, bbc2 hd normally use 128kb/s for 2 channel, so i think they were probably using a better bitrate
maybe that is on the iplayer recordings too ?

... but the radio stream is consistantly good (I'll sacrfice video any day)

jpaul · 29 Jun 2016 at 10:17

very disappointing subsequently looked at some Glastonbury iplayer hd video material, audio was only a pathetic 93kb/s ( tried squeeze & coldplay ) video might have been 720 HD (but who cares) so no sonic experience here.

davecarter · 30 Jun 2016 at 08:23

Yes pretty poor, whats the point in having such a great selection of coverage when the quality is that bad

ic1male · 2 Jul 2016 at 10:58

Sometimes the BBC go up to 1280x720 on the live streams but more often it's something like 960x540 or less.

jpaul · 2 Jul 2016 at 12:32

you are right I had reviewed an hd copy of peaky blinders online in iplayer and it only showed that resolution, I wondered if I downloaded it whether it would be the same.
[context menu within bbc adobe player online revealed video res and sound bitrate]

I did realise that my conclusion on the Glastonbury audio quality was wrong, the downloads had 93Kb/s but viewing online showed 320Kb/s , do not yet know why this is ! content protection ?

Rroff · 3 Jul 2016 at 22:32

I think the BBC might be occasionally testing higher quality streaming - 1-2 times recently I've had higher than normal quality - looking much closer to actual 1080p than the normal ~960x540.