Youtube still going great since I last posted, I don't know if it was random or an internal issue or what but that's over a month its been excellent now.
I just ordered a switch-over to Snap from Xnet (WorldXchange) and then found this thread. I have never had a problem streaming from Youtube, usually at 720P. If Youtube is poor after I switch to Snap, I will be asking for my money back. I'd much prefer to pay a higher price for my internet than deal with the crap you all have had for the last several months!
A. Some videos are having to stop playing to buffer
or
B. Videos aren't loading at full line speed all the time.
I've noticed that I haven't had to buffer anything for a while, although some of the videos may not load lighting fast they haven't got to the point where the video stops to buffer. Videos with 10+ mill views I can normally load at line speed.
Overall things have been good with the occasional slow video if it's coming from overseas. I don't see this is a major issue though.
I had issues around 5pm yesterday watching a 'just posted' video, so far as leaving it to load/buffer and it didn't .. no ASDL activity, progress bar didn't move etc etc - so after 20 minutes of leaving it, I watched about 30 seconds before it caught up with itself and had to buffer once again However this could be a Chrome or my computer issue
Watching some more videos at 8pm I found they loaded quickly and without issues, and I even tried several 720p for the first time and they worked without issue either (all of these had just been posted/had under 50 views at the time of watching so I assume won't be on any cache).
Well folks, today has been my first day on Snap having just moved from Xnet. My findings are interesting.
Playing popular videos at 720p is fine, but if try to play anything a little off the beaten track, it's veryslow. Much slower than Xnet was, and much slower than Telecom.
Given that my comparisons of Snap vs Xnet are via the same router, that connects at the same speed, I think the results are valid. Xnet would easily stream anything at 720p. Snap crawls badly when I try to play un-cached content. Any of the more popular videos are very good.
I also did a bunch of speedtest.net tests yesterday on Xnet and again today on Snap. Snap seems to have much better speeds from Australian sites than Xnet, but Xnet is slightly quicker from the US and Europe, but not a big enough difference to bother me.
So go figure - I don't know what Snap does different from other ISPs, but they are much worse on un-cached Youtube stuff for sure.
EDIT: OK, it's official - the esoteric music I like to listen to & watch on Youtube is basically un-watchable on Snap in HD and barely watchable in SD - this is verydisappointing.
So I signed up to Snap before finding this thread on Geekzone and am now locked in for 12 months unless I pay $155 to get out. I'm feeling a bit screwed now
Yes I have found that popular/cached content comes down fine... the whole video will download in 720p at about 1.8MB/s (constant speed)
If the video is new/less popular it comes through at just under 100KB/s (constant speed). This, of course, not being enough to watch without constant buffering.
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