The quality ladder and what an hour of picture weighs
A stream is not one picture but a ladder of five, and the player picks a rung from the connection and the device. The rung decides how much data an hour of it costs, and a reader who never looks at the rung is guessing at their own usage.
- tiers
- 5
- lowest
- 0.8 Mbps
- highest
- 12.0 Mbps
- an hour
- 0.36-5.40 GB
A stream is offered in five tiers from 0.8 to 12.0 megabits a second, and an hour of each weighs between 0.36 and 5.40 gigabytes. The player chooses a tier from the connection and the device, so the same match can cost a mobile reader a third of a gigabyte and a television reader five. A lower tier is lighter but not always quicker to arrive.
The ladder
Each rung is a different amount of picture per second, and the arithmetic between them is linear: double the bitrate and an hour weighs double. The player measures the connection and picks a rung it thinks will not stall, which is why the tier a reader gets is a guess the software makes rather than a choice the reader makes.
| Tier | Bitrate | Per hour | Per 2 h match | Typical screen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| low | 0.8 Mbps | 0.36 GB | 0.72 GB | a phone on mobile data |
| medium | 1.5 Mbps | 0.68 GB | 1.35 GB | a phone on wifi |
| high | 3.0 Mbps | 1.35 GB | 2.70 GB | a laptop |
| higher | 6.0 Mbps | 2.70 GB | 5.40 GB | a large screen |
| maximum | 12.0 Mbps | 5.40 GB | 10.80 GB | a television in a fixed line |
| five rungs | 15x range | 0.36-5.40 GB | 0.72-10.80 GB | one match, five costs |
A lower tier is lighter, not quicker
The intuition that a small picture arrives sooner is only half true. A lower tier carries less data, so it needs less bandwidth, and a connection that cannot hold the top rung will hold a lower one without stalling. But the delay depends on the buffer, not the rung, so a reader on the low tier is not closer to the event; they are watching the same delay at a smaller size.
- Which tier is playing, and is it the one the operator advertised?
- Is the picture small but punctual, which is the tier, or large but stalling, which is the connection?
- Did the tier drop during the match, which adds a re-buffer rather than a fixed delay?
- What does the same match cost at the tier your device is actually using?
- Would a lower tier make the picture arrive sooner, or only weigh less?