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21-24 Mbps not enough bandwidth to stream On Demand!?!

35K views 130 replies 43 participants last post by  veryoldschool 
#1 ·
Every time I try to watch an On Demand HD movie I get a message saying my download speed isn't fast enough to stream and do I want to just download the movie for later viewing. How much bandwidth do you need to stream? I can download a movie by bit torrent in less time than it takes to download an On Demand movie. How many people even have 21 Mbps? If that ain't enough, then very few people can watch streaming On Demand.

Your thoughts, please.
 
#27 ·
raott said:
Not sure, I'm not home. I'll check it tonight. Note, I did not do "watch now" I did the download (I assume there is a difference).
The only difference that I can see is "watch now" runs a check of the download time/speed before it starts playing. If/when it fails, it give you the option to record.
If it doesn't fail, it's still recording.
 
#29 ·
harsh said:
Absolutely!

Such is not to say that any problems aren't DIRECTV's fault, but the way an ISP chooses to balance their load can certainly have an impact.

If your true average bandwidth (after the first 30 second or so) drops significantly, you're a victim of "boost". Unfortunately, this is very difficult to measure as most of the bandwidth tests last 20 seconds or less.

Contrary to what the telcos used to crow about, everyone is running on shared bandwidth and if you're served by a node that is heavily loaded, you'll get degradation in speeds when you and your neighbors are collectively most active.

I ran a speed test last night to a machine that was located less than 40 miles away and the throughput was in the 4.3Mbps range on an advertised 15Mbps DSL connection. Clearly the ISP is overloading if you can't get 1/3rd your rated bandwidth.
Not necessarily your ISP's fault. Try doing the test to a few more distant servers located in say Seattle and California. You might find that it is just the pipe between your ISP and the server you're testing against that is the problem. Not saying that DSL can't be oversubscribed as well - if an ISP has less bandwidth to the outside world than there is demand for that bandwidth, everyone will slow down even if they aren't shared on a neighborhood basis like cable is. That is much easier to fix that an oversubscribed cable node, but it still costs real money to do and a provider trying to cut costs may not want to make the investment necessary if the beancounters don't think they'll get a return on it in the form of greater customer retention (i.e., if your local cable company sucks, your local telco has less incentive to not suck)
 
#30 ·
Time Warner Roadrunner with 30/5 and have yet to run into an issue that I can recall with anything on demand.

Youtube likes to crap out on me from time to time, but for the most part my connection is rock solid across all the various devices I utilize at home and content streaming from various providers.
 
#31 ·
One way to confirm the performance of your internet connection is to go to a site like http://speedtest.net/
The site tests your ping times, upload and download speeds and helps you cut through the "turbo," "ultra", etc marketing hype of your ISP to find out what you're really getting.
 
#32 ·
sigma1914 said:
Justify stealing however you wish, it's still stealing and illegal. The USB plugs aren't for illegal copies, they're for extra storage and playing copies you made of your library...not illegal torrents. Do you work for free?
Actually, yes, for many years I've done work and never gotten paid for it. Care to sue my clients for me? I'm owed at least $19,000.00
 
#33 ·
CCarncross said:
Wow....glad you can justify it.
I'll justify it even more if the authorities decide to show up by simply showing them that I legally own just about everything I've ever downloaded. When the music/movie companies offer free replacements for their defective CD/DVD's then I'll stop but I'm not going to buy the same product I've owned for years again. Go ahead if you want to.

btw, I've got a ton of DVD's that I paid $20 for that I watched only once because the movies sucked so bad. You want them? $10 bucks each.
 
#34 ·
veryoldschool said:
The only difference that I can see is "watch now" runs a check of the download time/speed before it starts playing. If/when it fails, it give you the option to record.
If it doesn't fail, it's still recording.
Do you know if they are they still offering a choice of a lower quality, faster download for some PPVs. I thought maybe the "watch now" would be a streaming version of that.

I didn't get a chance to re-download the movie last night. I will try tomorrow night.
 
#36 ·
slice1900 said:
Not necessarily your ISP's fault. Try doing the test to a few more distant servers located in say Seattle and California. You might find that it is just the pipe between your ISP and the server you're testing against that is the problem. Not saying that DSL can't be oversubscribed as well - if an ISP has less bandwidth to the outside world than there is demand for that bandwidth, everyone will slow down even if they aren't shared on a neighborhood basis like cable is. That is much easier to fix that an oversubscribed cable node, but it still costs real money to do and a provider trying to cut costs may not want to make the investment necessary if the beancounters don't think they'll get a return on it in the form of greater customer retention (i.e., if your local cable company sucks, your local telco has less incentive to not suck)
You make some good points, but I tend to put it on the ISP more. Sure when an ATM goes down it isn't the ISP's fault and everything slows down. For an ISP to have bandwidth problems "outside" seems rare, as the bandwidth is so large that it would take so many users to all be trying to max their usages.
It does come down to how well the ISP manages their network.
Cable seems to be more prone to overloading a node, as this is the least bandwidth making it easier.
I saw this yesterday with Compcrap, where one min it tested 0.8 Mb/s, and then 5.2 Mb/s, and then 3.2 Mb/s, and finally 2.4 Mb/s.
This node is way overloaded.
mreposter said:
One way to confirm the performance of your internet connection is to go to a site like http://speedtest.net/
The site tests your ping times, upload and download speeds and helps you cut through the "turbo," "ultra", etc marketing hype of your ISP to find out what you're really getting.
I wouldn't be so quick to say "confirm" the performance. ISPs can do some underhanded things.
I had speed problems with an old cable ISP.
The node was so over subscribed, that I could see when my neighbors went to church and came home. [no joke]
I worked with them for a long time trying to sort this out.
The first thing they did after showing the tech the speedtest results was to configure their end so speedtest ALWAYS reported full speed, yet the only time I had it was at 2 AM and 2PM could be hard just to get email.
I'm not says all ISPs are this underhanded, but that speedtest doesn't always give you the "whole story". Timing a download and comparing the size of large files will be a better "test".
The last weekend I was on this ISP, it was taking 18+ hours for SD On Demand, and DSL had just come into the area so I had it too and the same On Demand was less than an hour.
Several years later, the cable ISP finally ran another fiber to split the node.
 
#42 ·
Here's the warning. There will be no more discussion of downloading torrents.

Such discussions are a violation of the DBSTalk User Agreement (Link).

Mike
 
#43 ·
Mike Bertelson said:
Here's the warning. There will be no more discussion of downloading torrents.

Such discussions are a violation of the DBSTalk User Agreement (Link).

Mike
I didn't see the discussion on downloading torrents, but which section in the User Agreement does it violate? There is a restriction on posting instructions, but I didn't see anything forbidding a discussion about it. I don't care one way or the other, but I was just curious which section it violates.
 
#45 ·
I don't use D* VoD service all that often since it's not that great but lately I've been catching up with Dexter episodes. The past few days the service has been pathetically SLOW. It was fine the last few weeks but something is going on now. I tried a DVR reboot and reset my modem but it was still slow the next day.

The other night I tried to download a season 4 episode and it was still at 7% after an hour. That's bad. I wonder if my comcrap internet service is starting to throttle me since I've been doing more streaming lately with both a Roku and D* Vod. Frustrated!!!! :confused:
 
#49 ·
completly not an internet issue on the download side, game of thrones takes about 5 hours to download form hbo on demand. ive had 100mb and not have 25 mb down here. Its all on the other end for server upload speed.
 
#50 ·
Jodean said:
completly not an internet issue on the download side, game of thrones takes about 5 hours to download form hbo on demand. ive had 100mb and not have 25 mb down here. Its all on the other end for server upload speed.
Once again I wonder where you get this.
I read this and went to my Genie, pulled up Game Of Thrones and clicked on "watch now". It started right up and after 5 mins had 5 mins showing in my playlist.
 
#51 ·
veryoldschool said:
I guess a good question might be can you watch Zero Dark Thirty now?
I just checked my "watch now" of it and had no problems. It streams down at 7+ Mb/s
I finally retested this. No issues. Download zipped along at a 3-4 / 1 minute ratio. Don't know what was going on that particular night. I just know it wasn't my end because I did stream two movies at the same time off Vudu right after I quit the Directv download.
 
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