All live events that we broadcast require an Internet connection to enable us to do this. In an ideal world this would be with an upload speed of at least 1 meg.
In the UK we are broadbands poorest cousin with standard upload speeds of around 450kbps in the best areas.
Picture quality of our live snooker and live pool events deteriorates considerably below this mark although we do broadcast at lower bitrates. For example this weekend in Wales we are streaming at 148kbps. It is pretty much the lowest we can really stream at and even this speed gives a poor picture quality in full screen.
We need Internet connections to be faster in the UK, especially as more and more Internet users are either watching or streaming their own video content.
The event from Belgium next week should be streamed at around 300kbps so quality of the images and sound will be far better.
