What is a quick way to approximate the data rate when I stream music via wireless?
Asked by
2davidc8 (
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)
January 7th, 2015
If I upload my music to the “cloud”, say, iCloud or Amazon Cloud, and then stream the music to an iPhone or iPad via a wireless connection, not WiFi (because let’s say I’m in a car), at what rate would I be using up my data allotment on my wireless data plan?
If, according to Windows, a music file is 3.1 MB with a duration of 2:30 minutes, would the simple division 3.1 / 2.5 = 1.24 MB/min give me the first approximation that I’m looking for, or are things actually more complicated than this?
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7 Answers
A little more complicated. But that is like a 2% difference when you take into account things like ACK packets and handshaking. But it is safe to assume your estimate is correct.
Close enough. There are variables like error-correction losses and such that may make it take more or less of your plan for the same song each time you play it, but if you’re just estimating then that’s about right.
Personally, I ballpark it to about 100 MB/hr partly to simplify the math, and partly because I would rather guess high and use less than guess low and get an overage charge.
OK, @johnpowell and @jerv, thank you so much!
Now, if I wanted to watch the evening news while traveling in a car (as a passenger, of course!), I would think the data rate is much higher, no?
Video eats bandwidth. HD video especially. Figure on 2GB/hr for HD video and 650MB/hr for standard resolution.
Great, thanks, @jerv . Those are exactly the ballpark figures that I was looking for!
A lot depends on how the video is encoded. I torrent a lot and a 30 minute show is around 200MB in 480p. But it can balloon up to 1.5GB in 720p for a 40 minute show. So it is totally hit and miss.
And something like the nightly news will use less bandwidth due to compression and inter-frames when the video is compressed. Basically when the video is encoded it only notes changes in frames so a episode of the simpsons in the same quality will use less bandwidth than a episode of Chuck since not many pixels change in animated shows. And in the nightly news it is like the Simpons where the background barely changes.
So it is best to find out how your phone displays the bandwidth used. It should display what each app uses. Then try it and see what it says you are using before and after watching the news.
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