Netflix bars / download speed

Burtletoy

I just switched to a new internet provider that has this in their service

If the end user moves more than 768Mbits of down traffic or 256Mbits of up traffic through the network during the 500 second timeslot, the end user will get marked egregious by the rate limiting device. This will then throttle the connection to 1,512Kbps Down, 256Kbps up. This throttle will remain in place for 60 min, at which point the cap will be removed.

Does anyone know what download speeds each bar represents on netflix streaming?

naporeon

I don't know what -- if anything -- those bars truly represent, but unless I'm grossly off in my conversion, you're talking about a consumption cap of just under 100MB for every eight minutes or so of video.

I'm pretty sure that you're not going to hit that, although you may get close for HD programming.

taliosfalcon

I could actually see you easily hitting that on HD w/ netflix because in my experience it'll buffer video 15-20 minutes ahead of where you actually are if your internet's fast enough.

They kinda explain it here http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html but it seems to boil down to the silverlight player just displays bars randomly woo

Burtletoy

Well I watched all night long and never hit any road bumps, so I guess this is [solved] but I can't edit titles for threads at work because it just changes to "undefined!!!" if I try.

Nathrak

If you're on a PC you can hit ctrl-alt-shift-s to see what datarate Netflix is using. Pretty sure bars are just the buffer filling. For me it starts out at a low bitrate then ramps up when it's sure I can handle it I guess.