To watch streaming TV you need to have a stable and fast internet connection, depending on the quality of the video. Here's everything you need to know
It's easy to say streaming: there's no shortage of services, but they're not all the same. The main difference, in addition to the catalog of course, is the speed required to the connection to have a good quality vision and without jerks.
Speed that depends mainly on the resolution of the video streamed and the compression applied. The higher the resolution, the heavier the video but the better the quality. The higher the compression, the lighter the video, but at the expense of quality. But if on a smartphone with a medium-sized screen can be acceptable even a streaming in 720p resolution, on a large smart TV the minimum resolution is FullHD. Then there are the 4K contents that, however, require a stable and fast connection. But what is the minimum speed of the connection required by the main streaming services?
TV streaming platforms: the average speed
An answer to this question is offered by a study of SosTariffe.it, which took into account all the major streaming services available in Italy and calculated the minimum speed required for a smooth viewing, without jerks and without interruptions. For a low-resolution stream it takes an average speed of 1.93 Mb/s: Chili and Amazon Prime Video consume 1 Mb/s, YouTube Premium 1.1 Mb/s, Mediaset Play 1.2 Mb/s, Dazn 2 Mb/s, Infinity 2.1 Mb/s, Now Tv 2.5 Mb/s, Apple Tv + 2.5 Mb/s, Netflix 3 Mb/s and TIMvision 3 Mb/s.
Up to the resolution of 720p the bitrate of the video stream increases a lot: YouTube Premium and Chili require 2.5 Mb/s, Amazon Prime Video and Dazn 3.5 Mb/s, Infinity requires 4 Mb/s, TIMvision 5 Mb/s and Apple TV+ even 6.5 Mb/s. For a 1080p stream the bitrate goes up further: Chili 4.5 Mb/s, Netflix, YouTube Premium and Disney+ ask for 5 Mb/s, Apple TV+ 8 Mb/s and Now TV 10 Mb/s. For 4K, finally, the average is 19.31 Mb/s.
The best connection to watch streaming TV
In the light of these data, empirical but realistic, we can say that to see streaming content in 4K resolution is absolutely necessary a fiber connection of the latest generation with the cable that comes into our house (FTTH, Fiber to the home). For 1080p resolution is more than recommended at least a fiber connection to the cabinet on the sidewalk (FTTC, Fiber to the cabinet). For cellular connections, on the other hand, 4G is essential for viewing content up to 1080p. Above this resolution, it's virtually impossible to stream video without incurring the annoying buffering.