Eyetv/Slingmedia HD slinging

[backpackster]

I am a regular user of both eyetv and sling media. I only remotely view live SD shows and SD recordings. I am happy with the results.

Does anyone have any experience "slinging" HD programs using either slingmedia, eyetv or even mythTV. How good is it, does rogers broadband/bell internet handle it well? How much bandwidth does it suck up?

[Tikker]

I use a Hava, and a locationfree player


it'll use as much bandwidth as you have, and basically, you probably don't have enough to do HD justice


that being said, if you're slinging to a small screen (iphone/ipod/android phone/etc) then you can have a very decent watching experience

[hugh]

If you are satisfied with SD then you will be quite pleased with HD.

Bandwidth usage is predicated on the level of compression and how much programming you sling. The decoder in the latest Sling Pro is much more efficient than earlier Slings so take your current SD usage and add 25 to 50%

In a thread about the Pro HD version (or whatever Sling calls it, I forget), a couple of years ago I produced some bit rate numbers if you wish to search the forum.

As far as internet connection goes, the bottleneck is your upload speed. That depends on your location and your package. The best way is to use Speedtest to check your upload speeds.

[HWP]

I have a similar question.

My wife is Korean, and just recently I became aware of the Slingbox. I've recently had the idea of sending a Slingbox to my wife's sister in Seoul and having her set up an HD Slingbox in Korea for my wife and kids to watch Korean TV here at our home.

In Korea, the whole country is wired with fibre optic cables. They have no bandwidth limits and both their upload and download speeds are at 100mbps each direction.

No problems on their end.

My thought was that if I set up a Slingbox at our place, we could return the favour to them to help their kids learn English watching our TV.

I'm wondering, streaming and downloading are different, right?
Streaming uses up less bandwidth? But how much less?

Let's say they are watching three hours a day of HD from my TV and if we're watching three hours a day from their TV, that is a total of six hours per day of HD that is being up/down streamed on my internet connection. How much bandwidth might that be?

I figure using six hours a day is a good worst-case scenario since I don't think we'd average that much.

I think I could gang DSL modems/accounts with Teksavvy to achieve a high enough uploading speed.

But I really would like to get a ballpark idea as to how much bandwidth one hour of HD streaming (not uploading/downloading) specifically using the slingbox pro hd would use.

Anyone have any ideas or experience?

[hugh]

HWP, please note that most providers limit your uploading speed so you are not going to be able to sling HD to Korea the way you can to a computer on your home network. Assume that you might have 500 kbps uploads and then you can calculate potential usage.

Streaming uses up less bandwidth? But how much less?

Streaming is just a different way of downloading where you see the video as it comes through rather than completely downloading it and then watching it. If you streamed an entire movie vs. download, the amount of data transferred would be about the same.

[HWP]

That is unfortunate. I have read on the Slingbox website that in order to get a quality HD signal out, one needs approx 1.5 - 2.0 mbps upload speed.

I guess that means you can't really stream an HDTV signal to Korea in real time.

I wonder though, since you can pause, rewind, etc... My wife in Korea could start a show, walk away for some time, and then come back and watch a smooth HD picture after several minutes. Would that work?

Maybe sending SD is better. Just keep it simple. The problem is once you get used to an HD picture on an LCD TV, it's hard to go back to SD on LCD. CRT TVs handle SD pictures better.

Upload speed and bandwidth are two problems that are hard to deal with at this time.

I hope we can overcome this problem in our big old countries. The more newly-modern countries have leapfrogged us in internet innovation.

Thanks

[HWP]

Hello,

I just got off the phone with Bell. I was just calling for information but I ended up booking an installation appointment.

They have a product called "Fibe25." My neighbourhood has apparently been wired for fibre optics, I guess. "Fibe 25" gives 25mpbs download speeds and 7mbps upload speeds. For $10 extra I upped the bandwidth limit to 155gigs/month. I think the overage fee is $1/gig to a max of $30.

Once I figure out how to calculate bandwidth amounts based on 6hrs/day of combined up/down loading of HDTV.

Over-The-Air probably uses a bit more bandwidth since most of the signals are 1080i

Could anyone please provide me with the formula on how to calculate bandwidth usage, and/or please explain the relationship between speed and bandwidth.

As I understand it, bandwidth is the volume of data overall.
Speed is the amount of data that can be uploaded and downloaded per second.

So what is the volume of data (bandwidth) if I am uploading HDTV to my wife's family in Korea and if they are simulatiously uploading HDTV to us?

Does the Slingbox pro hd convert my OTA 1080i ATSC signal into another format before it sends it out? If so, what is the bandwidth size of whatever format the Slingbox pro hd sends out at per six hours of HDTV?

If I can learn how to do these calculations, I can figure our whether or not I should go through with this Bell Internet installation. If we're looking at 1000gigs plus per month, I predict they won't like me much and perhaps my idea, while great, is not ready for prime time.

Too bad. The biggest challenge seemed to be speed, but now the problem is back to being bandwidth.

Thanks

[Larry]

Originally Posted by HWP

I wonder though, since you can pause, rewind, etc... My wife in Korea could start a show, walk away for some time, and then come back and watch a smooth HD picture after several minutes. Would that work?

In a word no. What you get is what you get, whether you pause or not. The saved video in the buffer on your sling-client is exactly what you would see if you were watching it "live".