ISP Virgin Media Tops UK Netflix Chart of the Fastest Movie Streams

Netflix UK, the unlimited movies and TV subscription based video streaming service, has published its latest December 2012 rankings for broadband Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom. The ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix video streams on each ISP.

Cable operator Virgin Media had the fastest overall speed for Netflix video streams during December, scoring 2.16Mbps (Megabits per second), although there wasn’t a lot between the big ISPs. Unsurprisingly Mobile Broadband operators scored significantly lower.

Netflix streaming is not the same as a speed test and its results can be affected by all sorts of factors, such as the dynamic nature of different video codecs, wifi network performance and the possible choice of either Standard Definition (SD) streams with a lower bit rate or HD videos (SD streaming is still quite dominant).

Netflix claims that our 30 million members view over a billion hours of their video content every month, which includes data from other countries. The firm states that its rankings are a “great way to see which ISPs offer the best Netflix experience” but in reality the difference is quite small, although it’s a useful table in case any ISPs ever decides to restrict Netflix’s traffic.