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Sky on demand - slooow downloading!
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Have just set up the wireless connector to our sky HD box - all is working ok - HOWEVER, to download something is taking ages - up to 30 mins to an hour - rather than a few minutes.
Is this normal - and if not should I phone Sky to ask them about the download speed?7
Thank you:)
Is this normal - and if not should I phone Sky to ask them about the download speed?7
Thank you:)
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secondly, who is your ISP?
Sky and we were just trying it out - picked on something from BBC iplayer for on demand:)
yeah what in particular, as i will try it and see if it's also slow for me.
chances are it'll be a poor wifi signal.
depends entirely on what your download speeds are like.
for me, i can watch within 5 - 10 seconds usually.
nothing they can do about that really
An HD movie took only half an hour to download and was viewable inside10 minutes or so.
Our BB is nothing special so these are pretty average expectations.
You can watch SD programmes much faster than HD ones as they become available to view inside seconds as opposed to a few minutes because HD requires more than 10% downloaded first (sometimes up to 30% I think) - this being to provide a buffer so you can watch without interruption.
What is your usual internet speed? Try a speed test at speedtest.net for a reasonably accurate reading of your internet speed, and then we could give you an idea of how quick programmes should be downloading
My speed is 2.6mb/s. Multiply by 60 to get per minute and by 60 to get per hour and that's 9360mb, so about 1gb per hour.
A downloaded 114m HD film has a file size is 3.63gb, so it took around three and a half hours. It would be around two hours from starting, to be available.
If my speed was around 5.5mb/s or higher, it should be available to view in a few minutes.
And if that's as fast as your line will take, because of distance from exchange etc, there's not much that can be done.
So many movies, so little speed
There is something that can be done, but that depends on two factors, fibre being available in their area and they would be willing to pay a little more each month for the pleasure.
Fibre is what I have had to wait for because it takes me longer to download a SD programme than watch it, HD downloads can take five hours or more before they become available. In a few days I will be able to watch content SD/HD almost instantly as me speed will jump from less than 1meg to around 60meg, Xmas has come early for me.
Sky on-demand stuff is restricted to a max download speed of around 20Mbps even so HD content usually available to view within 20 second dependnig on the size of the file.
I have my router set up to give Sky OD stuff a guaranteed 20 Mbps so that it doesn't have to contend with then kids when they to max out the connection. Anyways they still have 50Mbps to play with.
>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(
MB = Megabyte
Mb = Megabit
A byte is 8 bits
Mb/s = Megabit per second and is in what speeds are normally quoted.
the lower case m stands for milli, or a thousandth.
However I've recently switched to 100MB from Virgin Media (with the Sky box connected to the router via ethernet) and whilst most programmes are available to watch almost instantly, it's still slow to complete the full download - much longer than downloading an equivalent sized file on the PC.
This is because you want it as fast as possible on a PC, because you can't generally do anything with the file until it has finished downloading.
With the Sky system, as long as you can watch it, it doesn't matter how fast it downloads, so generally it goes at an optimal speed to allow almost instant viewing (if your internet speed is good enough), but does not need to use all the available bandwidth, as you can't watch it any quicker.
in most cases it means instant viewing: a 3-4GB hd movie (typically 90-120 minutes) becomes available to view within seconds.
but "revenge" in the "tv box set" section, which is 2GBs and programme duration is 40 mins, it takes about 10 mins to start viewing (full download approx. 50 mins).
I had a bit of a slow down last week, even though speedtest.net showed 21mb for my Sky broadband.
So I took the mains lead out of my Sky wireless adapter, and put it back in after 30 seconds.
Now back to 'available' within seconds instead of half an hour or so.
As you haven't advised your internet speed, or how the Sky box is connected to the router, how can anyone advise whether they think this is right or wrong?
It was taking over 30 mins for a programme to become available. Just thought i'd point it out if others were having problems recently.