Rarely has entertainment over the Internet been as important as it is today. This applies not least to customers receiving their classic TV program package over the Internet, i.e. to those using IPTV services.
Despite the current crisis, the basic principles remain unchanged: the data packets delivered by a broadband connection transport television content as well as data traffic and telephone calls.
If the increased concurrent use of these services is giving rise to load situations, the question of quality becomes even more relevant: which Triple Play (TV, internet and telephone) providers are delivering reliable high quality?
And bearing in mind the lockdown restrictions and the massive increase in home office use, connect and zafaco also wanted to answer another basic question: are network tests at all possible in these exceptional times? At the end of our comparison, you will see why we can categorically answer this question with “yes”.
Most providers are coping well with the extra load
In fact, the IPTV test results reported under these conditions are more enlightening than ever. After all, they clearly reveal which providers are coping well with the increased demand and which ones are experiencing bottlenecks as a result of the extra load.
As in previous years, our IPTV test only looks at offerings based on (V)DSL or fibre optic technology. The reason for this is that the digital DVB-C TV standard is used for TV over broadband cable rather than the Internet Protocol (IP).
The achievable picture and sound quality depends on completely different factors and hence it is excluded from the tests carried out here. You can read about how we carried out and evaluated our tests under "Our test methods".
But what we can divulge here is that the results reveal some familiar as well as surprising findings: above all, there are big differences in quality and performance.
For more information about how well the individual IPTV offerings performed, see connect issue 6/2020.
