Realistic minimum broadband speeds for watching 4k streams or YouTube videos

[Phillip Gwynne]

What would you say is a minimum speed needed to watch videos in 4k. Most companies say around 20mbps but have seen a few around 12-13mbps. But I very rarely can watch just a 5min YouTube clip in 4k with out buffering. Even if I pause for a few mins so the start can be loaded, it will still catch up n buffer. Sometimes 1080p will buffer. My broadband averages around 13/14mbps but has gone upto 20mbps and off peak hours is often over 15mbps. But can’t watch much without buffering in 4k and in peak hours 1440p buffers a lot. I’d say 20mbps minimum, but for at least 75% of time without issues, I’d say 30mbps. What’s your thoughts. Also I’m with EE on ADSL broadband. We’re 900m on the same road and nowadays can’t get much more than 14mbps early evening and 17 late. But anytime if day the upload won’t go above 870kbps yet syncs at 1160kbps. The download usually syncs around 18mbps but surprisingly it’s over 21mbps but doesn’t feel faster. The router is about 8 years old and not great. Would a newer decent one help improve ADSL speeds? It looks like bt won’t bring fibre to our road for another two years at least and Virgin is just too expensive unless you can afford tk
Commit to the top tv, phone and broadband packages. Some deals workout more money if you take landline phone out. Interested in other peoples views, and sure others will find this helpful.

 

[Turn]

@Phillip Gwynne Depends on the bitrate really, as YouTube might have a different bitrate to Netflix for example, so it'll depend site to site.
Also depends what codec each site uses, and how compressed the video is, so it's hard to put 1 figure on it.

This is what YouTube recommends: - https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/78358

 

[Rroff]

In my experience stuff like YouTube 4K you really need around 25mbit/s downstream or faster, especially if on a shared connection, to keep it running smoothly.

Some places their 4K offerings are way below what I'd consider a good 4K resolution/quality and stream at more like 15mbit/s or even less.

 

[Phreaky]

Netflix recommend 25mbit for 4k and its not even particularly good 4k, so I'd put that as a minimum baseline.

 

[ChrisD.]

I would go with Virgin, keep an eye in their offers. Sub 20 Mbps is going to be pretty bad at most things.

 

[Sparx]

You have Virgin available but complain about 15Mb ADSL speeds? Are you nuts

If you do a quick Google search, go through www.uswitch.com for Virgin and you can get 100Mb for £24pm. Why wouldn’t you?

 

[Steveocee]

Base level Virgin is about £24 per month now isn't it for 100Mb? How much do you consider too much to achieve what you want?

 

[Caged]

If the budgets are that tight then just drop to 1080p and enjoy smooth playback, this seems to be a problem you're creating for yourself.

 

[ChrisD.]

I have to laugh at 4k and 25 Mbps, when a 1080p Bluray will hit 50 Mbps.

 

[TheVoice]

I was previously on a 32-34Mbps connection and YouTube at 4K was a struggle. It'd manage it at times but would often pause to buffer and catch up. I'd usually just use 1080p.

Netflix etc were mostly fine though.

 

[Stu999]

I’m on 37Mbps and that’s fine. You do get a more noticeable load time at the start of a video or if you rewind or fast forward.

 

[nlel1975]

Realistically you need a gigabit lol

 

[WJA96]

I’m on 37Mbps and that’s fine. You do get a more noticeable load time at the start of a video or if you rewind or fast forward.

Basically this is how most streaming devices handle slow connections. They buffer and then the play back from the buffer. I know plenty of people on the lower tier VDSL (30-40Mbps download) and they have Netflix no problem.

 

[ecksmen]

I have to laugh at 4k and 25 Mbps, when a 1080p Bluray will hit 50 Mbps.

That's what buffers are for and variable bit rates.

The following is some port stats, which show a typical evening of watching streaming content. A combination of Apple TV on 4K with HDR (For all mankind) and local NAS content via a Vero 4K+ (50GB files from a NAS).
Anything above 30Mbps would be sufficient in my book (and I'm on 1Gbps).

 

[Phillip Gwynne]

You have Virgin available but complain about 15Mb ADSL speeds? Are you nuts

If you do a quick Google search, go through www.uswitch.com for Virgin and you can get 100Mb for £24pm. Why wouldn’t you?

I just been reading through my old posts, and read your comment saying how 200mbps on Virgin is £27. I thought that price would only get the 50mbps speed. I think we pay similar price for EE upto 20mbps broadband and landline. So I will definitely now consider that. When I was looking at the packages, it seemed that you’d only get good value if you picked a top end package with tv. For example if you decided you didn’t want landline or tv, then the monthly cost would actually go up. The other thing was the cheap prices were only for first 12 months and then they’d go up quite a bit

 

[Sparx]

I just been reading through my old posts, and read your comment saying how 200mbps on Virgin is £27. I thought that price would only get the 50mbps speed. I think we pay similar price for EE upto 20mbps broadband and landline. So I will definitely now consider that. When I was looking at the packages, it seemed that you’d only get good value if you picked a top end package with tv. For example if you decided you didn’t want landline or tv, then the monthly cost would actually go up. The other thing was the cheap prices were only for first 12 months and then they’d go up quite a bit

Guess you haven’t looked at their broadband only packages then lol. Virgin contracts are 18 months. Obviously it goes up after but that’s the same with most other ISPs. You just play the game and ring them up to renegotiate.

 

[Dg834man]

Big problem with some of these content delivery systems is they often burst maxing the connection then stop for a few second before repeating, yeah sure the average delivery is like 25Mb/s but in reality you need quite a bit more to ensure playback without buffering, not saying this is fact just an observation from a year or so back when i had a crappy 15.5/0.69 fttc connection.

 

[RSR]

If you take this YT video for example and set it to 4K:

You will see consistant peaks around 56Mb~

So with that in mind Id probably say 70/80Mb would be enough which allows for some overhead.

 

[Caged]

It fills the buffer at the speed your internet connection allows. If your connection is slower then it will fill the buffer slower. If it can’t fill the buffer quicker than the buffer plays out then your TV show gets interrupted.

If you had a gigabit line then it would be filling the buffer at several hundred megabits per second, but for tiny amounts of time. That doesn’t mean you need a 200Mbps connection to watch YouTube.