Firstly, a Happy New year to all readers!

Decided to see how the iPlayer performed on my setup this morning when I know that I have lots of bandwidth available. Purely subjective of course but I thought it would be of interest and add to the conversation on here so far...

I'm lucky in that I enjoy a cable length to the local PBX of probably about 1Km and get a physical connect on my Draytek router of 7.6Mbps all the time with a normal logical (PPP) connect of average throughput 6.25Mbps through most of the non-peak hours of the day. This was the case this morning when I tried iPlayer Beta on my Foxsat HDR.

I have the facility on my Draytek to monitor traffic flow by session to a specific client on my network and the HDR is connected directly by wire (100Mbps). When I first tried, I used the lower quality option for various programs and predictably it was extremely quick to start up and never tended to go above about 600-800bps but of course, the picture quality was dire (IMO)...

I then tried the high quality option and in particular, I picked the Guitar Heroes V program from BBC Four. Again, startup was quick but I noticed that during actual program startup, the bandwidth demand actually peaked at up to 5.5MBps(!) for a short time (the monitor updates every 10 seconds so it may have gone higher briefly but it's an average figure anyway) however this then settled back to between 1.6-1.8Mbps average for the greater portion of the program but I did see peaks of in excess of 2.4Mbps on occasion when there was more complex content and movement in the image. I also saw times when the demand dropped below 1Mbps (even at high quality) when the image was not complex and fairly static.

All in all, I was quite impressed with the high quality option but only when there is lots of bandwidth available on my ADSL connection (via O2). It seems to me that the slow program startup that other people have experienced, is directly proportional to how much bandwidth can be mustered for a given connection and that the lower this is, the longer the startup will be... Also, during times that lower bandwidth is available, the higher quality option suffers much more from freezes and dropouts during play; which of course makes total sense. Anecdotally, O2 is almost unusable for iPlayer after about 3pm in the afternoon as their network gets congested until gone midnight when it lightens up again; even on my excellent connection.

Colin

Interesting - I was considering swicthing to O2, what does the iplayer diagnostic report as usable bandwidth in the 6-8pm window when I'm most likely to use iplayer ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics

I'm with Eclipse currently, never noticed a slow down in peak periods, but then I'm paying over the odds and I know it.

Well, I was a bit late seeing this post but here's what it is showing right now...

How your speed compares with recommended speeds:
Description Speed Status
Your connection 1249 kbps
Your available bandwidth is 1249kbps. n/a
TV - HD 3500 kbps Uses 280% of your available bandwidth. failed
TV 1500 kbps Uses 120% of your available bandwidth. failed
TV 800 kbps Uses 64% of your available bandwidth. passed
TV 500 kbps Uses 40% of your available bandwidth. passed
Radio 128 kbps Uses 10% of your available bandwidth. passed


I was with Eclipse in the past and got good service from them also but (as in O2's case now) they became a victim of their own success and started suffering slowdowns during peak hours to unacceptable levels (for me) so I moved. I should hasten to add at this point that there is absolutely no chance of us ever getting an LLU product from any provider because absolutely no-one in the ISP-sphere has unbundled our local exchange and doesn't look likely to in the near future either...

Don't dismiss O2 because wherever you are, you may be able to take advantage of their LLU product (rides on BE) in which case it should be ok.... It's only people who use their Access Network (via BT wholesale) that are suffering as I am... (AFAIK)

Check SamKnows here to see...

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/se...xchange-search

I'll run the BBC diagnostic again tomorrow morning as a comparison...

I watched some iPlayer on my mum's Foxsat HDR over Christmas and was also quite impressed.

Speedtest.net indicated her line gets 2.2Mbit/s and she is on the most basic Eclipse package, yet "high quality" worked well - better than Freeview picture quality for sure and it only dropped down in resolution a bit once, for a second maximum.

The only negative was that for some reason, it thought that Hamlet was only 87 minutes long (in fact the programme was 185 minutes) and it cut off at that point on both HQ and LQ versions. The same file on the PC didn't cut off.


A small issue that seems like human error. Overall I was very impressed - far better than on the Wii.

Have noticed a bug today there is no catogories today they were there thursday.

Gave the BBC iPlayer Diagnostics site another go this morning right during the period when I enjoy maximum bandwidth availability from O2.

Strangely, it said more or less the same thing as my previous test (1390ish Kbps) and now leads me to question how valid the Beeb's diagnostics are?

Just to check, I watched the whole of Gary Brooker's Gameswipe on iPlayer at high quality and for quite lengthy parts of the program, the router showed session demand from the HDR at a sustained 2Mbps+ even though the Beeb's diagnostics suggested that my link couldn't sustain that...

The program itself played excellently. Not a drop, smear or block interrupted a really good quality program which actually had some highly animated and busy segments and saw the bandwidth demand peak in excess of 5Mbps for extended periods of time.

These leads me to believe that the Beeb's iPlayer diagnostics page and the way it appears to work is a little misguided to say the least... Complete rubbish at worst! (and no valid guide at all)

Charlie...

Oh dear... now I feel a right one too...

A speed check is a measurement of transfer between you and an arbitrary server which aims to represent the real scenario, however it might not be the same server which delivers your content. Also the content type of the test will be different to the video supplied and O2 are likely to prioritise "real-time" traffic like iPlayer.

Bob

Indeed Bob and that kinda reflects the general direction on how I was thinking actually... (in the sense of how well iPlayer seems to be working even when the demand is high on my ISP's platform...)

In fact, a couple of weeks back, O2 did actually send an email about introducing QoS into their traffic management package and I sent them a technical question in regard to iPlayer traffic which they haven't given me an answer for yet... (I seem to have stumped the call centre!)

I await the answer with baited breath...

Colin

PS. BTW, congrats on the job you guys have done with the Foxsat to enable iPlayer. I'm really quite impressed so far...

The BBC's iPlayer diagnostics tests use the correct sort of content and the specific servers / CDN's that are used by iPlayer (which is why it does 4 tests). It *should* be a very good indicator of real world performance and should not be treated differently by the ISPs.

Ok but my point was that real world use on my HDR contradicts what the BBC Diagnostics site says in its results. It asserts that my connection cannot sustain streaming above about 1250Kbps when my router diagnostics (and it's a router that is a cut above your average cheap box) shows that this is rubbish when actually "real world" streaming iPlayer content to my HDR/TV...

That kinda destroys what the Beeb's tests are trying to say...

I'm somewhat late looking back in on your response, thanks - results of the diagnostic test do seem really poor compared to your reported line speed and actual experience. My exchange is LLU so I think I'll give them a go, saves me close on a tenner a month and eclipse bandwidth limit is fairly low anyway.

Lucky devil... let us know how it goes, I've heard good reports about their LLU speeds.

I've finally got around to testing iPlayer on my HDR this evening and although the menu seems a little slow, playback is very good and I was pleasantly surprised at how good the quality on my 32" Philips LCD TV. My ethernet cable is about ten metres long into the room on the other side of my home where the router is.

I trust any new Freesat receivers might have WLAN?

I did a speed test on the iPlayer homepage and it told me that my connection was fast enough for SD but not for HD. I duly tried Eastenders in HD and it was fine for some reason.

On one occasion, after pressing "Exit" on the remote the iPlayer GUI was still visible in front of the programme showing on BBC One without the black background but after pressing Exit a couple more times, it seemed fine again.

It is so perversely nice to read theses inputs without them causing me to do any activity at all..
Despite living only 20 miles from london..
I like many millions in the SE are stuck with a BBD connection of around 1 MEG..and
little chance of improvement for many years..
Not a Private cable supplier for many many miles..
Hence my cyniscism about Competition.
But i thought i would input some data..which would be helpful in considering bandwidth requirements of the IPLAYER..
I recorded 26 mins of the New Year Fireworks.. Highly contrasty on SD BBC1.
Looked Brilliant on the 6year old Plasma.
26Mins SD TV BBC is 672Megs equals 26Megs/Min
A virtual real SQUARE relationship
EQUALS 1550Megs/Hour..
Hence there is little likelihood that the millions around London will ever benefit from the facility in the next several years..

stan

BBCi does not need the same bandwidth as broadcast TV for a start it uses mpeg4 compression.

High quality is about half what you say at around 670Mb/hr

MB/hr that should be i.e. Bytes not bits.

This equates to 1.5 Mb/s.