UPSTREAM BANDWIDTH MATTERS

We mentioned how cheap storage is for video archival purposes, so opting for higher bitrate video encodes to improve the quality isn’t really an issue if you’re only storing files for archival purposes, or building your own media server with thousands of movies.

For livestreaming, however, the bitrate can be a critical consideration, and it’s largely going to depend on what sort of internet connection you have. Those of you with symmetrical gigabit fiber connections can just laugh and move on, but the rest of us probably have far more downstream bandwidth than upstream.

My personal connection currently consists of 1Gbps down and 20Mbps upstream bandwidth. Thankfully, I don’t have a data cap, but 20Mbps means I’m best off capping video bitrates to 16Mbps — and that needs to include audio as well, though that’s usually only 128kbps. Many cable providers won’t even offer 20Mbps, with 12Mbps or even 10Mbps upstream limits still being common. Basic internet connections with 50Mbps downstream bandwidth often only have 7Mbps upstream, which would limit you to 6Mbps encodes at best, while a budget 25Mbps down/3Mbps also exists. Even watching videos on a 25Mbps stream can be problematic at times.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the only way to increase your upstream bandwidth will be to throw money at the problem, and outside of large metro areas even that might not suffice. There’s always Starlink, though that also gives expected upstream speeds of just 10–20Mbps. If AV1 does become the new standard for streaming, though, 1080p streams with just 6Mbps should provide very good overall quality.