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A comment on 3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai says in final report. Parent comment

Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by garrettgrimsley on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:04AM (#25858866)
From the Zoom system requirements:

1:1 call

* 600kbps (up/down) for high-quality video

* 1.2Mbps (up/down) for 720p HD video

* Receiving 1080p HD video requires 1.8Mbps (up/down)

* Sending 1080p HD video requires 1.8Mbps (up/down)

Group call

* 800kbps/1.0 Mbps (up/down) for high-quality video

* For gallery view and/or 720p HD video: 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down)

* Receiving 1080p HD video requires 2.5Mbps (up/down)

* Sending 1080p HD video requires 3.0Mbps (up/down)

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-System-r...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by saltyshake on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:19AM (#25859030)
yes, but most households have more than 1 person living there and sharing the connection for their own Zoom or YouTube.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by toyg on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:28AM (#25859126)
Now multiply that by 2.53 (average US household size in 2020) and you'll see why 3 Mbps are probably not enough.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by notyourwork on Thursday January 21, 2021 @01:56PM (#25862564)
Exactly my point! Consider a group of college students living together or an average family and we start to realize that its not about a single activity but the multiple parallel needs for the same shared pipe that causes congestion.

I find it surprising that so many seem to disagree that this is ridiculously low.

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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by cm2187 on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:37AM (#25859221)
I am all for high bandwidth, but it blows my mind that people have the expectation to do video conferencing at 1080p quality. It is bluray quality, which was only available 10years ago in offline / disk format. It is great if we can but I wouldn't call it a requirement.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by ubercow13 on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:42AM (#25859284)
It's not really blu-ray quality though. You could have a 4K video conference at 1Mbps if you so wished, but it wouldn't look nice. Likewise a 1080p Zoom stream isn't really anything like a blu-ray video.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by cm2187 on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:45AM (#25859321)
The quality may not be there but the pixel count is. I agree most webcams are not precise enough to give a real 1080p quality + bandwidth constraints. But you would be better off with a fluid 720p.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by cozzyd on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:29AM (#25859133)
I'm surprised the screen-sharing bandwidth required is so low... I guess it must be quite low framerate? Because some of us have giant monitors...
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by grenoire on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:33AM (#25859180)
Unless you're streaming video games (high FPS, as you noted the inverse, and significantly larger portions of the screen being refreshed, usually the entire one) the 'deltas' are relatively small. Combined with low frame rates, your usual business presentation occupies a small share of the bandwidth.
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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by cozzyd on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:38AM (#25859237)
on the other hand, I'm mostly staring blankly at my webcam with a static background. though admittedly the webcam sensor is a lot noisier :)

but yeah, I suppose the update rate of most screen sharing is pretty low.

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Re:3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai sa... by 1-more on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:33AM (#25859170)
It's usually pretty easy to compress because you're so often sharing text on a solid background. I'm figuring that there's gotta be a higher bitrate for sharing, say, a movie or video game than sharing my jira board.
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