Is there a magic minimum speed needed to stream most services?

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Is there a magic minimum speed needed to stream most services?

Post by Admin » Thu May 28, 2020 8:40 pm

If you are new to cord cutting and streaming TV and wondering what the minimum speed needed is, to stream most services you've come to the right place.

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While you can certainly get by with less, most services especially live-streaming services recommend 25 megabits per second. The more common way it's written is 25Mbps.

This is especially true if more than one person plans on streaming content at the same time. If only one user is streaming 10Mbps will get you by on sites like Netflix, but don't expect 4K resolution.

If you plan on using your cell phone provider for streaming content at home, please be aware many imposed pretty low data caps. And with streaming TV especially HD content it does not take long until 20 GB or lessor plans run out of data.

Certainly, any data plan that offers unlimited data is best. But those are not always easy to find.


Cable Still Offers The Fastest Broadband

Nothing beats big cable when it comes to broadband, nothing else out there can touch their speeds offered. Some offer 100Mbps as standard. And even go all the way up to 500Mpbs or Gigabit download speeds.

While these later numbers are nice for business or commercial use, they are overkill for most home networks.


DSL plans in Some Parts of the Country Are Actually Sending Data At Much Slower Speeds Than Advertised

If cable Internet is not an option, check for local Wireless broadband providers. They are often faster and much less expensive than satellite broadband. While slower than Cable Internet, they can provide acceptable speeds for streaming.


DSL providers which still use the old copper wires used for home phone lines to transfer data are often the slowest broadband providers.

Unless they tore out their old copper wiring and upgraded their network to fiber optic, trying to watch live and on demand content on old DSL lines is tedious at best.

It may be worth checking all your local cellphone carriers first before trying to use an antiquated DSL network for streaming. Some carriers may provide unlimited Internet packages with a lot faster speeds than DSL.



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