40Mbps Broadband Required – BBC to Stream 2018 World Cup in 4K

The BBC has announced another UK iPlayer trial of their 4K (Ultra HD) and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video streaming quality, which will cover all 29 of their 2018 FIFA World Cup matches. Unfortunately to get the most out of this they’re recommending that users have “at least” a 40Mbps broadband ISP connection.

This isn’t the first time that the BBC has tested such technology and they’ve continued to refine their approach, although sadly the new trial will still be restricted to offering only a “limited number of spaces available (tens of thousands) for each game” and those will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis. Sigh.

On the upside this will at least limit the capacity impact on broadband ISP networks during the tournament.

Technology and Broadband Requirements

Assuming you actually manage to get on to one of these trial screenings then you’ll also require a better than “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) connection to get the most out of it, as well as a 4K and HDR supporting TV. At present the BBC iPlayer service recommends a download speed of just 2.8Mbps (Megabits per second) for their normal HD video streams, which falls to 1.5Mbps for “standard quality” (SD).

By comparison the BBC are now recommending “at least” a 40Mbps connection to view the best full 4K quality (3840 x 2160 pixels) and if your connection can only deliver 20Mbps+ then you’ll instead be presented with a lower resolution of 2560 pixels (wide), which is still well above full 1080p HD quality (1920 x 1080 pixels) but it’s obviously not 4K. All footage will be shown at 50fps (frames per second).

We should add that the High Dynamic Range (HDR) standard being used by the BBC is known as Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), which the BBC says “provides improved picture quality not only to HDR Ultra HD devices, but to the vast majority of Standard Dynamic Range Ultra HD devices, too.”

HLG can be found on most of the major 4K HDR displays produced since 2016/17 (Bush, Hitachi, JVC, LG, Phillips, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony etc.), as well as Roku’s 4K Streaming Stick+ and the Sky Q platform (although streaming on Sky won’t support HDR). Sadly neither Apple nor Amazon’s latest streaming boxes are able to offer compatible iPlayer apps (NOTE: Netflix and Amazon use different HDR tech – HDR10 and Dolby Vision).

Additional Thoughts

Interestingly the BBC’s own news item on this trial claims that the 40Mbps requirement is “faster than that to which most households have access,” which is not strictly correct unless they’re looking at take-up instead of availability. Otherwise we can only assume that they’ve been confused by the Government’s estimate for 24Mbps+ capable “superfast broadband” coverage (available to 95% of the UK) and wrongfully interpreted the 24Mbps as being a limit rather than a starting point.

Virgin Media’s 350Mbps capable cable network alone covers around half of UK premises and Openreach’s VDSL2 based FTTC platform, which has the widest coverage of any fixed line “superfast” infrastructure, can in theory go up to nearly 80Mbps on good copper lines (signals degrade over distance). Sadly 40Mbps isn’t a standard definition and so we don’t have any solid coverage figures for that but it’s likely to be way.. above the 50% mark.

One other thing to mention, which won’t be a problem if you have a truly “unlimited” usage package, is that the 4K streams will gobble masses of data. For example, even if you are only streaming at an average of around 25Mbps, which is normal for other 4K services, then 1 hour of usage could potentially gobble around 7-11GB (GigaBytes) of data (video bitrates are variable depending on the content being displayed and technology used – hence the range).

Suffice to say, if you have a restrictive usage limit on your connection then you might wish to avoid 4K for now. Lest the dreaded excess usage charges become an issue.