How Much Data Does Iplayer Use

The BBC'south fantastic iPlayer is getting more and more than mobile employ. When it was first introduced over five years agone, it was only always intended for viewing on computers at home – even HD Television receiver was far from a reality for the average user. Still, present its common to see someone watching the latest Television set show or film using their mobile while on the bus. With the recent furore about the mobile data limits imposed by EE on their new 4G network, nosotros thought we'd look into how far your bandwidth allowance will go when watching TV on BBC iPlayer.

There are lots of varying answers online as to how much of your mobile data assart iPlayer volition use upwardly. A big problem with many of them is they are guesses or outdated. iPlayer has recently rolled out higher-quality streams that will apply upwards more than bandwidth. Another upshot is that it's quite hard to measure exactly how much data is actually existence transferred past iPlayer every bit many users don't;' know how to isolate it and measure just that rather than all the other downloads and uploads going on with torrents, email, push notifications, HTTP requests and other protocols all running in the background.

We ran some simple tests on five unlike iPlayer programmes to see how much bandwidth it uses. Nosotros measured the total amount of information and came up with an average corporeality for an hour long program.

The respond

On average, watching Television set on iPlayer volition employ near 632MB/hr. It could be as low as 600MB/hour only it could also be much higher and so, to exist safe you lot should upkeep well-nigh 600-700MB for every hour that you are streaming.

How long volition my allowance last?

With data allowances on most mobile phones being betwixt 500MB and 1GB the elementary table below will make information technology clear how much TV you tin afford to sentry each calendar month before going over your limit. Don't forget that the amounts below are if you lot only watch TV. If you lot employ you mobile internet to download games or fifty-fifty bank check email and update Twitter, the amounts volition exist less (in some cases significantly and so).

Many more details

The way that iPlayer works is incredibly complicated. At that place are a diverseness of audio and video codecs, you than access information technology on a huge assortment of platforms and there are merely hundreds of variables to consider. On top of this, calculating how large a certain slice of video will exist when encoded and compressed on a estimator is already an inexact scientific discipline. If you just want to know roughly how much mobile data you'll utilise watching Boob tube on iPlayer, the figure to a higher place will do. Only if you're more interested, we'll delve into the details a bit more.

Our calculations

To work out how much bandwidth information technology really uses, we took a sample of five dissimilar programmes that were recently broadcast on BBC channels. Nosotros tried to go a diversity of dissimilar shows as the particular characteristics of each Television set evidence will result in slightly different file sizes. Nosotros then shut downwards all web services apart from iPlayer and used a bandwidth monitoring program to see how much information each plan took. We repeated the results after using the Hard disk version of the streams.

Having done all this, we collated the results and, using the broadcast length of each show, calculated a bandwidth rate for each in MB per hour. And then now the tabular array below displays how much bandwidth each prove will take per hour of streaming as well as the boilerplate.

Programme	Standard bandwidth (MB/hr)	HD bandwidth (MB/hour)
Later Live With Jools Holland (Serial 41 Episode five)	658	1110
Never Listen The Buzzcocks (Series 26 Episode 5)	630	1134
The Thick Of It (Series 4 Episode 6)	637	1024
Natural World (Episode 3: Queen of Tigers)	633	1126
Eastenders (2012-10-25)	600	1110
Boilerplate	632	1101

As yous can see, watching the standard stream you're looking at nigh 632MB/hour for streaming over iPlayer. This is quite high so definitely keep an center out if you have whatever monthly bandwidth limit and peculiarly if you tether your phone to stream TV using a PC or laptop.

The HD-quality stream may look fantastic but they employ almost twice as much data. Our results showed that view Hard disk material on BBC iPlayer uses about 1101MB/60 minutes or most 1.1GB/hour. With a 5GB limit you'll run out of data just watching ten minutes of Tv a twenty-four hours.

Other considerations

The original iPlayer app used a peer-to-peer protocol to distribute video. This meant that in addition to downloading the program you lot were watching, you would too upload large amounts of data making the bandwidth required fifty-fifty larger. Sometimes uploads fifty-fifty continued subsequently you stopped watching. Withal, this is no longer an consequence. Information technology is worth because that iPlayer has recently upgraded to a higher quality data stream which means that the bandwidth required is greater and that old estimates are probably out of engagement.

Don't forget that iPlayer also uses completely dissimilar sound and video codecs depending on the receiver you lot are using. They accept various efficiencies and bandwidths also. The resolution also changes resulting in vastly dissimilar information usage amounts. Then, for example the iPhone H.264 feeds from the BBC are higher quality than in the Wink-based in-browser iPlayer.

The stream quality and bandwidth required besides depends on the network you use. And then using a Nokia N95 to watch iPlayer over 3G volition use less bandwidth than using Wifi while watching iPlayer through a Wii or iPhone will outcome in a limit on the resolution of the stream. The best way to watch it is with a PC (whether using wifi or tethered to your mobile phone) where you lot can choose the resolution, you lot go high-quality H.264 encoding and you can become resolutions upwards to 720p. This does mean that you need a lot more bandwidth though with data requirements coming in at up to about 1400MB/hour.

Conclusion

iPlayer uses a lot of bandwidth, specially if you desire to view the lovely HD quality streams. We can predict roughly how much data it will take upward but be certain to use an app to track your mobile cyberspace usage if y'all desire to be sure. And be aware of how much yous're using and so if you don't take unlimited data and need to go along within network limits, yous don't get hit past massive fees.