Date transfer rate question

[planetc]

Mobile internet is still quite limited here in the uk and I'd like to figure out what cost would be involved for me to use placeshifter on the road. I don't have any idea what sort of compression rates placeshifter uses so can anyone give me an idea on data transfer rates (perhaps per hour?) please.

[tmiranda]

There is an option to set the data rate to whatever you want.

[planetc]

ok thats cool, so to get a watchable picture on a netbook or laptop what sort of figures would we be talking about?

[tmiranda]

I can't say for sure. I know when I use dynamic streaming it hovers between 300 and 400 mbps and the picture is watchable. I think if you get below 200 mbps it will be very grainy. Your best bet is to try it at home and find out. (You do not have to be remote to use the fixed bitrate feature.)

[planetc]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Your best bet is to try it at home and find out.

that's why I'm trying to find out, don't want to purchase hardware if the solution is unworkable at a practical running cost

[tmiranda]

What hardware are you considering purchasing? The server in your sig should be able to do just fine.

[planetc]

I would need either a netbook or low cost laptop, (my old celeron 466 just won't cut it in this world ) but the biggy is the mobile broadband setup which in the uk is still very expensive if you go 'out of bundle'. Maximum (regular) monthly data rates stand at 15gb but most sensible priced packages are at 3 or 5gb.
It's not something I'd use every day and it is possible to use wireless hotspots, unlimited when available, on some packages so I might be willing to take the plunge if I can get a decent picture at a low enough data rate to fit in with these limitations.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I can't say for sure. I know when I use dynamic streaming it hovers between 300 and 400 mbps and the picture is watchable. I think if you get below 200 mbps it will be very grainy. Your best bet is to try it at home and find out. (You do not have to be remote to use the fixed bitrate feature.)

I believe "mbps" above should be "kbps". 200 Mbps is more than enough to stream 10 Hi Def channels in MPEG-2 format.

I don't know how things work in the UK but the limiting factor is often your upload speed. My cable internet here in Canada is 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up. Lower level service cap the upload speed at 512 kbps.

[planetc]

Upload is 768kbps. I was trying to convert to a rough Gb/per hour figure and struggled with these figures tbh. I'll have a play with kbps and see if it seems more realistic. I know it can all be a bit confusing becasue there is also a difference between MBps and Mbps. I took the figures to mean megabits and worked them out to be something that seemed daft so figured they might not be correct. Anyone confirm?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by wayner

I believe "mbps" above should be "kbps". 200 Mbps is more than enough to stream 10 Hi Def channels in MPEG-2 format.

[wayner]

By my calculations 768 kbps (kilobits per second) = 96 kBps (kiloBytes per second) = 345.6 MBph (MegaBytes per hour) = 0.3456 GBph (GigaBytes per hour). I am using the Giga=1000 Mega = 1000 kilo convention rather than a binary definition of these prefixes.