Spark Sport - still having problems?

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OnceBitten

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#272777 15-Jul-2020 12:49

My brother is in a permanent care facility and we've set him up with Spark Sport on his Dell Laptop - mainly so he can watch formula 1.

I went to visit him in the weekend and he's having problems. He was watching some motor racing (qualifying?) and it would stream perfectly for 5 seconds, then stop / freeze for a millisecond, then continue... and repeat... it was doing this for the whole time he was watching it while I was there.

I'm pretty sure it was buffering of some sort

I don't know if the problem is with his laptop, the care facilities internet / wifi, or with spark sport

His Laptop is a Dell - he doesn't know how old it is as he bought it 2nd hand 3 years ago - but it has google chrome and seems to work otherwise

He has an external hard drive with movies on and he watches movies regularly without any problem

he's connecting to the wifi wirelessly - could that be an issue? would plugging in an ethernet cable from his laptop to the ethernet plug on the wall in his room make a difference?

I know Spark sport had some problems with the RWC last year- mainly with buffering, but have these problems been fixed?

any advice would be appreciated

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#2523486 15-Jul-2020 12:50

Do you have any more info on the spec of the laptop, and the speed of the internet connection? It would be good to run a speedtest and see what actual download speeds he's getting.

hio77

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#2523488 15-Jul-2020 12:54

This sounds like wifi congestion issues..

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OnceBitten

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#2523493 15-Jul-2020 13:20

hio77:

This sounds like wifi congestion issues..

ok can someone tell me a good speed test site please so I can check upload / download speed?

I don't know where to look to find the specs of his laptop either - I presume you right click the windows icon on his laptop?

wratterus

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#2523529 15-Jul-2020 14:42

Go to speedtest.net and hit go - that will give you a 'close enough' result.

Specs - there are a few different places to go. if it's Win10, type the word 'system' into the search, and open 'System Information'.

Would be good to primarily know the CPU (processor) & RAM (physical memory).

You can get this by right clicking 'This PC' and 'Properties' too.

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#2523532 15-Jul-2020 14:48

I haven't experienced any issues lately, and living rural I have only modest bandwidth (ADSL and 4G).

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#2523615 15-Jul-2020 17:04

Ive watch a lot of Spark Sport since F1 came back recently. The only issue I see is in interviews, the video pauses at times for a second or so then catches up. The rest of the coverage has been bang on

ChCh Spark Fibre, ATV4 app, by ethernet.

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OnceBitten

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#2525338 18-Jul-2020 21:42

Ok, so I visited my brother this afternoon and the first thing he talked about was spark sport!

I had a look and we watched a few minutes of last weeks F1 and a bit of Trackside TV, and the buffering was still present although a little less frequent that last week

I managed to get a look at his Dell Laptop and these are the specs

Windows 7, 2009 Service pack 1

26b RAM (or is that 2.6 - can't read my own writing!)

64 Bit Operating System

Intel Core (TM) 2 duo CPU

P7800 @2.53 GHz

I also did a speed test and these were the results

Ping 4 ms

Download 6.86 mbps

Upload 18mbps

it looks like they have stuff fibre in the facility he is in because when I went to speedtest.net stuff fibre came up on the screen

Can someone tell me if these down/upload speeds are ok - if not what should they be?

looking at the specs for his laptop I'd say that's more likely the culprit with his buffering issue... so he may need a laptop upgrade, or I get him a good TV with all the apps on.... he wants to get Sky TV too so that's something else I am looking into

any more advice would be appreciated

hio77

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#2525341 18-Jul-2020 21:50

kinda looks like they are on a 100/20 plan based on that upload, download clearly showing contention.

a core 2 duo might be a little weak for spark sport, some of the decoding atleast last i seriously checked it out was fairly heavy.

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comets

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#2525384 19-Jul-2020 00:16

LOL , his laptop makes my laptop feel good, i bet he got it around 2008-09, Windows 7 has been discontinued, atleast update to the last service pack in Win7 (Avoid upgrading to win8.1 or above, a laptop that old won't be able to handle it) and 256mb RAM, mate that can't play anything anymore, definitely not 1080p live streams... see if you can atleast upgrade it to 4gb RAM (which most older laptops can go to) .. tat might be the main issue, the RAM, as even software that run videos may need more than 500mb RAM to fully run its old video card.

OnceBitten

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#2525636 19-Jul-2020 15:14

Thanks for the replies,

I spoke to someone at Harvey Norman (about TV's) and they said that the latest Samsung TV has all the apps on it including spark sport... we are looking at getting a TV for him to get Sky TV into so I might just get him a new TV so he can watch Sky TV and Spark Sports on

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#2525642 19-Jul-2020 15:38

Noting that the wifi connection is most likely marginal for App use.

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#2525669 19-Jul-2020 16:54

OnceBitten:

Ok, so I visited my brother this afternoon and the first thing he talked about was spark sport!

I had a look and we watched a few minutes of last weeks F1 and a bit of Trackside TV, and the buffering was still present although a little less frequent that last week

I managed to get a look at his Dell Laptop and these are the specs

Windows 7, 2009 Service pack 1

26b RAM (or is that 2.6 - can't read my own writing!)

64 Bit Operating System

Intel Core (TM) 2 duo CPU

P7800 @2.53 GHz

I also did a speed test and these were the results

Ping 4 ms

Download 6.86 mbps

Upload 18mbps

it looks like they have stuff fibre in the facility he is in because when I went to speedtest.net stuff fibre came up on the screen

Can someone tell me if these down/upload speeds are ok - if not what should they be?

looking at the specs for his laptop I'd say that's more likely the culprit with his buffering issue... so he may need a laptop upgrade, or I get him a good TV with all the apps on.... he wants to get Sky TV too so that's something else I am looking into

any more advice would be appreciated

A dual-core laptop which is >10 years old, running an operating system that is no longer secure and fit to be on the Internet... should not be streaming media content. Should not be on the Internet! It's a security disaster waiting to happen.

Kinda doesn't matter what the state of the Internet connection is (but with upload times 3 times slower than download times, something's hinky!)

You might, barely, have the bandwidth in a 6mbit download range to get a single hi-def video stream. But any other internet usage is going to contest it and degrade the service. When I was on ADSL I could manage a couple of video streams in that range, but I also made judicious use of offline video storage...

Loads of problems to sort there before you even look at video streaming as anything other than a best-efforts-at-own-risk level.

No signature to see here, move along...

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#2525677 19-Jul-2020 17:12

comets:

LOL , his laptop makes my laptop feel good, i bet he got it around 2008-09, Windows 7 has been discontinued, atleast update to the last service pack in Win7 (Avoid upgrading to win8.1 or above, a laptop that old won't be able to handle it) and 256mb RAM, mate that can't play anything anymore, definitely not 1080p live streams... see if you can atleast upgrade it to 4gb RAM (which most older laptops can go to) .. tat might be the main issue, the RAM, as even software that run videos may need more than 500mb RAM to fully run its old video card.

Much more likely to be 2GB RAM (OP did question his handwriting) than 256MB, but yeah the rest of the specs are not flash. I have a a Core Duo desktop still lying around with 2GB of RAM which was upgraded to Win 10 at some point and fired it up to see what it is like - SLOOOOW is the answer

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#2525680 19-Jul-2020 17:32

If he bought the laptop 3 years ago used, someone ripped him off. Something that bad is only suitable for ewaste materiel now, and was not much use 3 years ago.

Don't bother trying to update it or upgrade it. Needs to go.

Richard rich.ms

tdgeek

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#2525801 19-Jul-2020 19:02

OnceBitten:

Thanks for the replies,

I spoke to someone at Harvey Norman (about TV's) and they said that the latest Samsung TV has all the apps on it including spark sport... we are looking at getting a TV for him to get Sky TV into so I might just get him a new TV so he can watch Sky TV and Spark Sports on

Does he have Sky? If so, why get Spark Sport, when Sky bypasses the network issues that seem to exist. Or get an Apple TV4 or an equivalent Android device that you can connect via ethernet, and get out of the wifi/PC issues

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