Streaming costs for PAYG broadband

[tpbury]

Hi, my financial situation has gone pompey wise and I'm trying to figure out how much of the euros I can afford to stream.

 

I know that downloading a film from BBC iPlayer costs me 700Mb for, say, a 2 hour film, so that's 700*1.47=about 10 dollars (aus). So, if I watched a match for 2 hours on a legal (bbc) or dodgy stream, would it cost me about the same in terms of data transfer? Or would the low quality stream not transfer so much data, thus costing me less, albeit I'd probably have to load a bunch of ads?

 

I can get BBC via a VPN thing which costs 5 GBP a month, but that's prepaid till August.

 

So, given that I am on prepaid, how much do you think it costs to stream?

[tpbury]

Thanks for your help guys. I was particularly amused by post #5, however, can anyone offer a real insight into how megs a live stream would likely take?

[saintbletch]

Not a lot of help here either I'm afraid tpbury as it would be very difficult to predict.

 

Compression of video is a complex business where only the stuff that changes from frame to frame is compressed and sent down the line. So if you were watching a film where the majority of the story was shot in a dimly lit room with a close-up on two people talking, then the amount of data being sent would be minimal. As not much is changing from frame to frame.

 

However, if you're watching a fast-moving car chase, or perhaps the tippy-tappy Spanish team moving the ball from one side of the pitch to the other all the time, then the amount of data being sent would be far greater.

 

Add to that the different SD and HD formats, the different embedded players (Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, etc.), re-sending of data packets due to a noisy line, the quality and number of channels of the audio stream and you really are in the realms of finger-in-the-air predictions.

 

The good news is that given the ponderous and defensive style that England is likely to exhibit at the tournament, you could probably watch 90 minutes, extra time and penalties of England v France for about 47c (AUS).

 

But if it's that important, I'd probably look for a utility that would limit the bandwidth (data per second) that your PC can send/consume. That way you can safely watch knowing that it won't exceed a specified maximum cost per minute/hour.

 

This is the first such utility that came up on Google so not a recommendation but NetLimiter might do a job for you. The discipline appears to be called "Bandwidth shaping" if you want to search for other utilities.

 

By the way I thought post #5 on this thread was outrageous. How did he get that goat in that position in the first place?

[tpbury]

Thanks, mate. Forces beyond our comprehension have removed the JayRod/goat link

[trousers]

I don't see any problem with post #5 personally. A well thought out balanced opinion as usual from that poster IMHO

Edited 11 June, 2012 by trousers

[saintbletch]

Oh, very clever trousers.

 

You post that disgusting picture and then edit your post so that it makes tpbury and me look like fantasists.

[tpbury]

Well if it's goats, there's always a reason for fantasy. The eyes. Remind me of the ex. Possibly the hooves.

[hutch]

Simplest solution, if your finances have truly gone Pompey-wise, is to get one af the site admins to sort it out for you at 2c in the $.