Minimum bandwidth to watch smooth 1080p Youtube videos

[djdelarosa25]

I live in the Philippines, and the price to speed of the internet here is notoriously crap. I'm on a 2 Mbps connection (laughable, I know right) and I will be switching ISP's since this one throttles daily if you reach 3 GB of data consumption. The cheapest unlimited data plan that I found in my area costs about $26 and offers 3 Mbps of bandwidth. I'm quite sure this is miles better that the current one that I have just for the fact that it is uncapped. However, is 3 Mbps enough for watching YouTube at 1080p30 with no buffering mid-video? My current connection is capable of 720p, but it does buffer a bit mid-video. If not, is it enough to watch fluent 720p?

[captain_to_fire]

It's enough for 720p (as long as you're the only one using it) but it's hit or miss for 1080p. 

[orangecat]

I used to have a 7 megabit DSL connection and I had no problem streaming 1080P YouTube videos.

[Sharif]

 

This should give you a rough idea, the extra buffering is resulting in higher speeds.

 

If you look at the network activity you will see that it's 1000KB (-+) 600KB or 8 Mb (+-) 0.6Mb. What I would conclude from this is you would need roughly around 6-7Mbps depending on the bitrate of the video

 

Ps Not really sure what connection speed is referring to here, so ignore that and keep in mind the 189s+ buffering which is increasing the final result speed shown. 

[Sharif]

38 minutes ago, Kilobytez95 said:

I used to have a 7 megabit DSL connection and I had no problem streaming 1080P YouTube videos.

If you got the time, can you please post your youtube "Nerd stats" in 1080p

[orangecat]

2 hours ago, Sharif said:

If you got the time, can you please post your youtube "Nerd stats" in 1080p

I don't see what they would do considering no two videos are going to have the same bitrate. I also have a 70 megabit connection now and normally YouTube only uses maybe 5-10 megabits.

[Remix]

YouTube will prefetch content to compensate for irregularities in bandwidth essentially acting as cache. I know YouTube (480p) uses 1.5 Mbps, so generally speaking 720p will surely be more playable at 3 Mbps.

 

When I get home I'll test it out for you. I'll throttle my PC to 3 Mbps from the AP and let you know how it handles.

[Remix]

Sorry for the major delay, I finally found time to test this without disturbing too many people. Please note that my results aren't entirely scientific, and will likely vary especially in your usage. I'll explain why.

 

My findings were that 1080p 30fps video would play on a 3 Mbps connection in my scenario, though it barely hung on. I loaded a ~16 minute 1080p video over wireless, throttled to 3 Mbps at the router (not AP). The buffer-health stayed between 1 second and 2 seconds, so not much buffer room. Any small blip would likely cause buffering. Furthermore, the video took a few seconds to actually play. It's not quick, but when started it'll play. I'd allow it a bit of time by itself to buffer-ahead and compensate for any anomalies with the Internet connection itself. That being said, the two main factors it does come down to are:

• Dedicated Internet: You have to be the only device actively using the Internet, I'm sure if another device was doing even Web-Browsing it wouldn't work very well.
• Buffer: Give it time to load and compensate for any anomalies, otherwise do expect it to randomly buffer.

Now, the part that gets confusing. My guess is that it'd not work given your circumstances. If you're throttled to 3 Mbps, you'll have blufferbloat. Blufferboat is essentially your router sending too much data, and it getting "backed up". In my scenario, I couldn't mimic that because I was on a 250 Mbps connection, and throttling the router manually still left overhead. Speedtests peaked on the router at 2.96. If your ISP does any oversubscription, you do have a shot of video playing. For example, Comcast gives subscribers a 20% oversubscription to compensate for buffer and anomalies. That being said, when I throttled my connection to 3.6 Mbps 1080p video played much more fluent giving me an extra 3-5 seconds of buffer. This may work...

[djdelarosa25]

8 hours ago, Remix said:

Sorry for the major delay, I finally found time to test this without disturbing too many people. Please note that my results aren't entirely scientific, and will likely vary especially in your usage. I'll explain why.

 

My findings were that 1080p 30fps video would play on a 3 Mbps connection in my scenario, though it barely hung on. I loaded a ~16 minute 1080p video over wireless, throttled to 3 Mbps at the router (not AP). The buffer-health stayed between 1 second and 2 seconds, so not much buffer room. Any small blip would likely cause buffering. Furthermore, the video took a few seconds to actually play. It's not quick, but when started it'll play. I'd allow it a bit of time by itself to buffer-ahead and compensate for any anomalies with the Internet connection itself. That being said, the two main factors it does come down to are:

• Dedicated Internet: You have to be the only device actively using the Internet, I'm sure if another device was doing even Web-Browsing it wouldn't work very well.
• Buffer: Give it time to load and compensate for any anomalies, otherwise do expect it to randomly buffer.

Now, the part that gets confusing. My guess is that it'd not work given your circumstances. If you're throttled to 3 Mbps, you'll have blufferbloat. Blufferboat is essentially your router sending too much data, and it getting "backed up". In my scenario, I couldn't mimic that because I was on a 250 Mbps connection, and throttling the router manually still left overhead. Speedtests peaked on the router at 2.96. If your ISP does any oversubscription, you do have a shot of video playing. For example, Comcast gives subscribers a 20% oversubscription to compensate for buffer and anomalies. That being said, when I throttled my connection to 3.6 Mbps 1080p video played much more fluent giving me an extra 3-5 seconds of buffer. This may work...

 

I'm lost of words. Thank you so much, man! This means a lot

[.spider.]

1080p30 can be between 1 Mbit/s and close to 5 Mbit/s depending on the content of the video.

 

[djdelarosa25]

Finally got my plan activated today and 1080p30 video is very smooth, with a 20 second buffer headroom for most videos. I am impressed