[GLLUG] ISP - How slow is usefull?

[Dom]

----- Original message -----
From: John Southall via GLLUG <gllug at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2017 17:17:11 +0100

> To save money I am considering changing from Virgin fibre to
> broadband.  The BT speed estimate is a maximum of 2 to 6.5 Mbs and a
> guaranteed minimum of 1Mbs.
> I don't stream films, but I do enjoy Youtube and BBC Radio, will they
> be bearable at 2Mbs or less?

I'm currently living in Australia with a not-so-great internet
connection. I normally get ~5 Mbps up and ~1 Mbps down.

Whilst YouTube and radio works OK, most of the time I opt for
downloading via youtube-dl [1]. This allows me to enjoy the maximum
quality without ever worrying about buffering. Oh, and youtube-dl
handles almost every streaming service I've ever asked it to [2].

That said, I do sometimes stream via MPV [3], which uses youtube-dl to
fetch the content. This works great. There is even a Firefox plugin [4]
to stream media from the current page via MPV (and youtube-dl).

[1]: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
[2]: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
[3]: https://mpv.io/
[4]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-with-mpv/

--
dom h
dom at hxy.io