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OtinG · 02-09-2019, 02:29 PM

A few years ago I lived in an apartment and had internet through AT&T along with their now mostly defunct U-Verse cable TV. On average I got 20Mbps of download speed. In my experience trying to watch Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, or Netflix was always a royal PITA at that speed, regardless of what you guys have experienced with your service providers in your locations. There was a lot of stops and starts when streaming as the system tried to get caught up on downloading. That made watching the streams painful and frustrating. I suspect some of the issue was due to other factors like having dozens of other WiFi users within a few hundred feet of my apartment, the router/modem provided by AT&T, etc., but the router/modem was literally within 6 feet of the devices used for streaming and I was using an ethernet connection. Cable companies and phone companies are pretty well known for supplying less than good equipment in my area. The U-Verse service was supposedly over optic cable and should have been better than it was, however apartment complexes often have aging, outdated cabling run, so that could have been another issue--not sure in this case.

At any rate, when I bought my house and moved into the suburbs I got internet with Spectrum (only game in town) and it was around 50Mbps at that time. I rarely had, or have had since, issues with streaming unless of course the streaming service is experiencing overload during peak viewing times. With the 200Mbps I currently have, I still have some issues with Hulu almost everyday, but that is likely on their end and those issues are few and short-lived. Amazon rarely has any streaming issues in my case. I don't currently use any other streaming services or cable TV services as I now use Hulu with Live TV for my TV channels.

Just because you guys have had good success streaming at 20Mbps is not necessarily to results others will have, especially if they live in congested, highly populated location with a high level of internet usage wherein the systems can get taxed beyond their capabilities, especially in large apartment complexes.

02-09-2019, 02:29 PM	#6
OtinG Old Gadget Guy Posts: 1,913 Karma: 6854865 Join Date: Jun 2018 Device: Oasis 3, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPad mini 6, iPad Air 2020, Alexa Devices	A few years ago I lived in an apartment and had internet through AT&T along with their now mostly defunct U-Verse cable TV. On average I got 20Mbps of download speed. In my experience trying to watch Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, or Netflix was always a royal PITA at that speed, regardless of what you guys have experienced with your service providers in your locations. There was a lot of stops and starts when streaming as the system tried to get caught up on downloading. That made watching the streams painful and frustrating. I suspect some of the issue was due to other factors like having dozens of other WiFi users within a few hundred feet of my apartment, the router/modem provided by AT&T, etc., but the router/modem was literally within 6 feet of the devices used for streaming and I was using an ethernet connection. Cable companies and phone companies are pretty well known for supplying less than good equipment in my area. The U-Verse service was supposedly over optic cable and should have been better than it was, however apartment complexes often have aging, outdated cabling run, so that could have been another issue--not sure in this case. At any rate, when I bought my house and moved into the suburbs I got internet with Spectrum (only game in town) and it was around 50Mbps at that time. I rarely had, or have had since, issues with streaming unless of course the streaming service is experiencing overload during peak viewing times. With the 200Mbps I currently have, I still have some issues with Hulu almost everyday, but that is likely on their end and those issues are few and short-lived. Amazon rarely has any streaming issues in my case. I don't currently use any other streaming services or cable TV services as I now use Hulu with Live TV for my TV channels. Just because you guys have had good success streaming at 20Mbps is not necessarily to results others will have, especially if they live in congested, highly populated location with a high level of internet usage wherein the systems can get taxed beyond their capabilities, especially in large apartment complexes. Last edited by OtinG; 02-09-2019 at 02:33 PM.