Why nobody talks about bingeing a show in 4K vs HD on a slow connection

I tried to binge watch the new season of The Last of Us in 4K on my standard 25 Mbps internet. By episode 3, the buffering every 10 minutes was driving me crazy. I swapped to HD and it played smooth the whole rest of the night. Learned that if your download speed is under 50 Mbps, 4K is gonna choke hard. Anyone else get burned by this or is it just my crappy rural internet?

4 comments

4 Comments

mason_murray813d ago

Nah, 25 Mbps is honestly fine for 4K if your connection is stable. The real issue is people blaming their speed when it's actually their router from 2015 or too many devices fighting for bandwidth. Plus most streaming services will just auto-drop the quality anyway so you don't even notice the hiccups.

hannahj492mo ago

Wait isn't 25 Mbps way under what you need for 4K streaming?

colegarcia2mo ago

Actually, 25 Mbps is totally fine for 4K on most services these days. Netflix recommends 15 Mbps for 4K, and YouTube only needs about 20. The bigger issue is consistency - if your connection dips a lot during peak hours, that's when you'll see buffering or quality drops. 25 Mbps might not handle multiple 4K streams at once, but for one TV it's perfectly adequate.

mitchell.thomas2mo ago

At my age, 25 Mbps feels luxurious - I still remember waiting 10 minutes for a single picture to load. My eyes probably can't even tell the difference between 720p and 4K anymore.