download speed required for HD movies
alanm47
Contributor - Level 1
Would anyone happen to know what download speed would be required to watch a streeming HD movie over the internet without pause on buffering? Thanks..
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Re: download speed required for HD movies
TimSykes
Specialist - Level 2
Anything fios offers will work for HD streaming. But its more of a limitation of the content provider, if its netflix or some other big name service, you should have no issues viewing it.
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Re: download speed required for HD movies
mattheww50
Contributor - Level 2

Depends upon how good a picture you want in HD.  The Panasonic Showstopper/Replay DVR's provided 3 recording speeds.

2 million bits per second, approximately VHS quality (260 lines)

4 million bits per second, slightly better than S-VHS (about 480 lines)

6 million bits per second, about, capable of roughly 720 line resolution.

To be honest a lot of the image quality is dependent upon how large the screen is, and how good the underlying resolution of the display is.

These units didn't claim to be HD capable, but when fed with very quality sources and the output delivered via component video to a high end television, the 4 and 6 million bit per second pictures are very impressive, considerably better than SD cable.

The Motorola HD DVR Verizon provides appears to operate at about 12 million bits per second for HD, and about 3 million bits per second for SD.

Analog TV over the air is limited to about 330 line resolution because of bandwidth restrictions, although TV's without a comb filter can only get to about 260 lines (which is why VHS is designed to only provide about 260 line resolution).

Hope that is useful to you.

Message Edited by mattheww50 on 12-19-2008 12:32 PM
Message Edited by mattheww50 on 12-19-2008 12:36 PM
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Re: download speed required for HD movies
TimSykes
Specialist - Level 2
I believe he is talking from the internat not the Motorola DVR STBs 
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Re: download speed required for HD movies
mattheww50
Contributor - Level 2

HD is HD, and comparable quality means comparable bit rate if you are talking about the same compression algorithm (presumably mpeg4). So whether it is to/from a DVR, or via the Internet, the bit rate required for a specific level of picture quality is the same. One can fairly easily calculate the underlying bit rate needs to be to provide uncompressed HD video. Anything less than that implies compression, which while very good, is not without loss of detail. How much you choose to compress the video determines the ultimate quality. The higher the bit rate, the higher the quality, and whether that bit rate is via the Internet, or from the HDD on the DVR makes no difference.

So while you can compress an HD image to get it down to 2 million bits per second by increasing the compression, there is a substantial loss in picture quality associated with it, and quite a few highly visible compression artifacts.

I have simply provided information about what sort of bit rates provide what levels of resolution.

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Re: download speed required for HD movies
TimSykes
Specialist - Level 2

That may be the case, but no one on the net streams uncompressed HD video. The amount of bandwidth alone for one site would be un measurable. For net Streaming of HD Video, so will get top streaming HD content a long as there is a wired connection. Wireless will depend on signal strength. 

For that matter Fios itself does not itself run uncompressed.

Source of info. I myself have done HD, and Blu-Ray video editing and know the data listed is correct. (or at least very near it) 

Uncompressed Data Rates

720p HDTV uncompressed;

8 bit @ 1280 x 720 @ 59.94field = 105 MB per/sec, or 370 GB per/hr.

10 bit @ 1280 x 720 @ 59.94field = 140 MB per/sec, or 494 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV uncompressed;

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr.

10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 99 MB per/sec, or 348 GB per/hr.

10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 132 MB per/sec, or 463 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 119 MB per/sec, or 417 GB per/hr.

10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 158 MB per/sec, or 556 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV RGB (4:4:4) uncompressed;

10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24PsF = 190 MB per/sec, or 667 GB per/hr. 

Message Edited by TimSykes on 12-19-2008 01:01 PM
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