# Downloads unbarably slow



## sunking (Feb 17, 2004)

Does anyone know what the typical download size of say an hour worth of video is? I'm assuming all of these things are mpeg 4, and the little that I have viewed quite honestly has seemed pretty poor in quality, so I'm guessing it is compressed to heck.

that being said, over my pretty standard verizon DSL connection it is DOG slow. I'm talking 4+ hours to download about 40 minutes of video so far. While it was downloading i went to DSL reports and ran the bandwith test and it came back showing I should be capable doing about 250kb/s. (again this was with a DoD download).

Does anyone know what the typical sustained download rate for one of these videos would be to be able to stream real time?

I know I don't have the best connection, but I think it is pretty typical of what the majority of people have for the < $50/mo range. I just can't tell if it's my connection that doesn't handle it, our D*s servers. If it's their servers they better work on it or else this is going to be a pretty useless function for the majority of America.

Just my initial opinion during the first hours of usage, which is what BETA testing is all about...


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## Dirk (Sep 15, 2007)

I am also curious as to how big some of the downloads are. My stupid cable company has a cap. >:|


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## skaeight (Jan 15, 2004)

I just found DoD was enabled for me, and I've also found its very slow. Not exactly "on-demand". I hope this improves.


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## ralphfurley (Jun 12, 2004)

i've had absolutely no issues with downloading via comcast. 2hr movie is complete in a little less than one hour. never had a playback issue. oh and i loathe comcast. perhaps they are simply superior to DSL


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## sunking (Feb 17, 2004)

ralphfurley said:


> i've had absolutely no issues with downloading via comcast. 2hr movie is complete in a little less than one hour. never had a playback issue. oh and i loathe comcast. perhaps they are simply superior to DSL


That may be true, in fact when I had cable I had a cable model and I have to say I do think it was better than my current DSL. However, I think that most people with satellite will have ditched their cable modem and gone with DSL because it's probably cheaper to bundle with your phone than to have cable model without having the cable TV bundle.

I'm sure there is someone out there who has actually metered and can give a pretty good ballpark figure out the size of an hours worth of DoD video. Unfortunately my tinkering days ended a few years ago and I have simplified and consolidated my home network so that I don't really have a good way to determine such things.


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## gregchak (Jan 8, 2007)

Anyone know the ports IP being used? Thinking about setting up QOS priorities in my router. Looks like its just port 80. Anyone see anything different?


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## jwd45244 (Aug 18, 2006)

gregchak said:


> Anyone know the ports IP being used? Thinking about setting up QOS priorities in my router. Looks like its just port 80. Anyone see anything different?


80 and it appears the 8080 may be used fro time to time


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## henryld (Aug 16, 2006)

Very slow on my DSL (ATT/Yahoo basic) service also. Took about an hour+ to download a 28 minute SD progran this afternoon. When the offerings start to include some compelling HD content I might be willing to upgrade my DSL service. Guess I will also have to spring for a large esata drive also since I am already running out of recorder space.


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## Ken S (Feb 13, 2007)

Remember guys the service is in testing so they may be working on items and not have full capacity up at all times.

If you have a DSL connection running at 1.5mbps you should be able to get at least 1:1 downloads. Make sure you don't have other heavy bandwidth activities going on at the same time. Children downloading music, streaming videos from YouTube and other things like that can take a chunk out of your pipe.


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## funhouse69 (Mar 26, 2007)

I've done some testing on this in the past it appears that D* is limiting a single connection to 7Mb/Sec but if you have 2 DVR's you can do another download at the same time and get 7Mb/Sec for that one as well for a total of 14Mb/Sec. Since more people now have access to DOD I wanted to see if there has been any performance hit and so far for me I've been able to get that 7Mb/Sec download speed each and every time I download something. I know I am one of the very lucky ones to have FIOS and it seems like it was just made for DOD  

As for how large the file are I tested that as well recently but the results were posted in the CE section which you have to be a member to access so I thought I would repost them here for everyone to access. The complete post is below. 


I did another test this evening to determine the size of a typical movie download. For this test I chose the first movie that came up the VOD list which was 2001 Maniacs which is showing up at 1hr 29min long.

This download took about 55 minutes to complete and came down at an average of 7Mb/Sec the whole time.

The total amount of data downloaded to the port that my HR20 is connect to was 2,604,379,168 bytes which is a little over 2.5GB in size.

To take this one step further I checked my DVD collection to compare the file size to a typical DVD. Keep in mind that this is only a comparison as DVD's can and are encoded at different bit rates which dictates the file size. I found that the movie Barnyard alone (no extras from the DVD) is coincidentally the exact same time as my test download and that is 3.87GB in Size.

Imagine how large an HD Movies is going to be :eek2:


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## Coffey77 (Nov 12, 2006)

sunking said:


> That may be true, in fact when I had cable I had a cable model and I have to say I do think it was better than my current DSL. However, I think that most people with satellite will have ditched their cable modem and gone with DSL because it's probably cheaper to bundle with your phone than to have cable model without having the cable TV bundle.


Very true, cable broadband is much faster than DSL. Sure, you can buy the upgraded DLS package for a bit of a speed boost.  I happily dropped DSL and got Comcast Internet.

I've downloaded a couple movies myself. I'll throw them in the queue and then go grab some snacks, water, popcorn... and by the time I get back, there's a great buffer ready for me. On an normal SD movie, I'll never catch up and even end up pausing it from time to time to get more food or beverage... (Great thing about the HR20/21 - PAUSE! ) I was able to try out some of the HD programming and that definately needed a larger buffer as it does take a bit more time to download.


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## DrZ (Nov 13, 2006)

With my DSL I was getting around 300kbps when my max is 756. It took me 20 minutes to download a 4 minute 'Bioshock' review from G4. With no option to upgrade my DSL and no hope of cable coming to my road if this is what VOD is It won't be anything more than a novelty at my house.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Broadband 101:
VOD with a 3 Mb/s connection should be fine for SD programs.
Both DSL & Cable modems have "weak points".
DSL is a dedicated line to your house but suffers [loss of speed] over distance to the phone company.
Cable modems share bandwidth in the node [the more neighbors using it the slower the download].
Even if there are no "problems" from your house to the router, you can still have problems from your ISP if their backbone is overloaded. Some ISPs are limiting service because of not enough bandwidth in the backbone.

With a 1.5 Mb/s connection, from my experience, 1:1 downloads won't happen. I have a 3 Mb/s and when I'm lucky I can do 1:1, but my cable modem service is still upgrading the system for all of the reasons I've posted here.


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## sunking (Feb 17, 2004)

funhouse69 said:


> This download took about 55 minutes to complete and came down at an average of 7Mb/Sec the whole time.
> 
> The total amount of data downloaded to the port that my HR20 is connect to was 2,604,379,168 bytes which is a little over 2.5GB in size.
> 
> ...


This seems a little bit odd. I know what I've viewed the quality is simply not there. I would compare it to what the SD local channels are, which is almost not watchable. Maybe I've just chosen bad movies, but they have been far from DVD quality. That being said, DVDs are MPEG 2(?). Wouldn't it make sense to reencode DoD to mpeg4 to reduce their size considerably, thus download times. Not to mention space on your drive when you start doing HD.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

sunking said:


> This seems a little bit odd. I know what I've viewed the quality is simply not there. I would compare it to what the SD local channels are, which is almost not watchable. Maybe I've just chosen bad movies, but they have been far from DVD quality. That being said, DVDs are MPEG 2(?). Wouldn't it make sense to reencode DoD to mpeg4 to reduce their size considerably, thus download times. Not to mention space on your drive when you start doing HD.


SD PQ will vary, but I use my TV's scaler [native on and 480i/p checked] and get a good PQ. From the VOD I've watched, some seems to look even better than some I get off the SAT.


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## SAlBO (Jan 6, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> SD PQ will vary, but I use my TV's scaler [native on and 480i/p checked] and get a good PQ. From the VOD I've watched, some seems to look even better than some I get off the SAT.


I do the same thing.......I think the PQ is hit and miss depending on which movie you DL.....


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

SAlBO said:


> I do the same thing.......I think the PQ is hit and miss depending on which movie you DL.....


What year [decade] the movie was made, may have a lot to do with it.


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

funhouse69 said:


> The total amount of data downloaded to the port that my HR20 is connect to was 2,604,379,168 bytes which is a little over 2.5GB in size.


Not to be too picky, but wouldn't that actually be 2.4GB?

2604379168/1024 = 2543339 KB
2543339/1024 = 2483 MB
2483/1024 = 2.42 GB


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## bangdemdrums (Jun 10, 2007)

I have 15Mbps/sec DSL and the speeds are great. I haven't "timed" it but it seems that most movies come down within 10-15 minutes. I've been able to begin watching immediately and never catch up to the download.


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## SAlBO (Jan 6, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> What year [decade] the movie was made, may have a lot to do with it.


I concur.....


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## mumblyjoe (Oct 27, 2007)

bangdemdrums said:


> I have 15Mbps/sec DSL and the speeds are great. I haven't "timed" it but it seems that most movies come down within 10-15 minutes. I've been able to begin watching immediately and never catch up to the download.


Who offers 15Mbps DSL and what does that cost you? That's about 10x what AT&T/Yahoo offers in my new neighborhood (they downgraded my service when i moved) and 2X what Comcast cable claims as a standard speed. I'm loking for an alternative ISP for my new house, but CC is so damned expensive compared to DSL.


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## SAlBO (Jan 6, 2007)

yeh, 15Mbps is really fast. I only get 8.2 out of my Road Runner turbo. I would love to get 15.....who and where is it available ?


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## saxon2000 (Oct 25, 2006)

bangdemdrums said:


> I have 15Mbps/sec DSL and the speeds are great. I haven't "timed" it but it seems that most movies come down within 10-15 minutes. I've been able to begin watching immediately and never catch up to the download.


DSL 1.5 M here, and download speeds are acceptable. If I start to watch right sfter starting the D/L I will catch up, but if I wait 10 mins, no problem. This should work great if the program has ads in it...

I am running all Linksys wireless with windows XP and a nice app called Network Magic that sets up and monitors home networks.

So far, I think that on demand is awesome.


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## bangdemdrums (Jun 10, 2007)

SAlBO said:


> yeh, 15Mbps is really fast. I only get 8.2 out of my Road Runner turbo. I would love to get 15.....who and where is it available ?


It's through Centurytel.net.

Fortunately, I'm in a new subdivision with fiber all the way from the CO to my house.

Yes, 15Mbps is blazingly fast.


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