Quick Question

What would be the minimum internet speed needed in order for Roku Channels to work properly.

Thanks

3-5Mb/s I think is the standard response, though you may see some rebuffering and/or longer periods of time before adaptive streaming kicks into the higher resolutions.  Obviously, if you want HD and higher quality, the higher the bandwidth the better.

crunch32 wrote:

Quick Question

What would be the minimum internet speed needed in order for Roku Channels to work properly.

It may depend on the channel.
Netflix has the following guidelines.
Below are the internet download speed recommendations per stream for playing TV shows and movies through Netflix.

• 0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection speed
• 1.5 Megabits per second - Recommended broadband connection speed
• 3.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for SD quality
• 5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality
• 25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality
  

I'll add some points to this discussion. “Speed” of an internet connection is a wide ranging discussion. As has been suggested here “5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality” while that’s an easy point to consume it’s IMO a long way from what’s really going on. If you’ve got a decent ISP and DNS server .5 Megabits may be good enough for a decent unbroken image on screen. If your stream is coming from an over loaded server, the ping times are long and your using a crummy DNS server then all the speed in the world isn’t gonna cut it. I see complaints from people with “100Megabits” and still they experience buffering. The Roku is fine. The DNS server your ISP is using may be garbage. I honestly don’t know how or if there’s a way to change the DNS server that the Roku uses. Or if it needs it at all.

I have 1.28 Mbps DSL, Ethernet connected Premiere Plus and Roku 2 (4210), 2016 40" Sony 1080p, and 2007 26" Samsung 720p. 
Currently I have subscriptions for SD Netflix and Sling TV Orange. Sling TV and Netflix picture/audio is great on my TVs. I typically have no buffering problems. Monday night football on ESPN (Sling TV) looked pretty good. I watched some movies on HBO on Sling TV this year, and they looked great. For Sling TV, I set the connection speed to 1.2 Mbps in the Sling TV settings.

T_J wrote:

I have 1.28 Mbps DSL,......

If that's AT&T that's probably a pretty good connection. That infrastructure is very different then COX.

Something to try. Netflix uses AWS ( Amazon Web Services ) to deliver it's content so if you've got a decent DNS server you should get a pretty good Netflix stream.

I've been having issues with Vudu lately, bit more sluggish than normal and I'm hardwired and getting 65 megs down.  I'm starting to wonder if its Spectrum's DNS and if so, I believe I can switch to Google's by adding them to my router's settings.

Netflix 4K streams top out at 16 Mbps, and 10 Mbps is sufficient for full 2160 resolution. Of course, you need some network overhead, so I would say that 15 Mbps would be the minimum necessary for 4K material. I've seen YouTube 4K material at over 44 Mbps, but I was at the limit of my Internet speed, so they might even support higher rates.