Streaming Television

[Trent242]

I’m sure this question has been asked a few times, but my SEARCH skills need some fine-tuning. I would appreciate your thoughts or feedback on your experiences regarding the following:

I am gatvol with the Satellite TV offerings in South Africa. DSTV’s latest price increases pushes the monthly cost of the Premium Package up to R700, Starsat has no children channels or sport and the e-TV FTA thingy is not an option.

So I’ve been looking at the pay packages available for Streaming Television from various providers. Not Netflix and the like… more along the lines of Filmon, SlingTV and Dish Network. I am aware that most, if not all, is blocked in SA and to use them I will have to go through VPN.

I have a media pc, running XBMC Frodo as the OS, and I tested it last night with a certain plugin, allowing me to access UK Live TV. I watched an entire episode of a certain motoring show as it was broadcast with no buffering (on a 2Mbps Telkom line), and the quality was good enough. So in-between DSTV and SABC quality. Obviously, on my current R199 Uncapped package from Webafrica, this will not last if I do it fulltime, as I will be relegated to the 1-star status in no time.

So, in my roundabout way, if I wanted to stream television. What type of ISP package would I need? Something like the Openweb Gold Uncapped, which is R399 pm for the 2Mbps line? On their site Openweb states that this is Unshaped and Unthrottled, and optimised for streaming. That is, until you reach your 140 Gb Fair Use Policy Limit.

My questions therefore:
1.) How much data does one use when streaming non-HD television over the web? My research on the web puts my estimates at abour 250mb-400mb per hour.
2.) What would be the best route to go, with the layout / setup above?
3.) Which package, from which ISP, would be most suited?

 

[Death]

Afrihost and Axxess's Uncapped accounts are optimized for things such as streaming. Not a bad idea to give them a shot (they do pro rata so try something before committing and cancel before the end of the month if it's not for you...)

 

[giggity]

Depends entirely on what you are streaming. My family and I stream YouTube, TV shows and movies every day and use about 150GB a month (I consider myself a decently heavy user). I recommend anything over 2mbps for steaming, because you're pretty much only going to get 1.5mbps from it, and it'll likely lag if you do anything while streaming.

Bitrate of a 720p video these days is approx. 1000kbps if it's well compressed. So a movie two hours long is only around 820MiB.

If you plan on streaming movies from things not recognised by ISPs as streaming services (like illegal streams or movie files from file servers) then it will count as downloading -- thus you will be throttled -- you should go for either business uncapped or capped internet. If you plan on streaming legal content, a standard 2mbps uncapped package from pretty much anyone with decent international speeds should serve you well.