Why does internet radio always buffer?

[gino_76ph]

hi

i like to listen to internet radio stations due to the variety of music i can listen to and also due to the lack of full Flash support yet for 2.1

my 3G & HSDPA signal is excellent almost anywhere....at home, at work and on the road and out and about. i'm with T-mobile (UK) for the past 5 years and i'm very happy with their service. and the signal.

but sometimes the internet radio still buffers sometimes even with an almost excellent signal.

why is this? any explanation?

 

[Hrethgir]

What internet radio app are you using? I know on Pandora, if you have it set to high quality, you might run into buffering because streaming high quality music can use a bit of bandwidth. And it's probably that same reason for other internet radio apps. Or the server might be really busy and just bogs down. Or a big bird flew betwen your handset and the cell tower, who knows. Mostly it just a bandwidth thing on one end or the other.

 

[gino_76ph]

i'm on Orange (UK) and on an "unlimited internet" tariff (of course that's what they say but in reality its around 500MB maximum which i was told was a lot of data) while i'm out and about London and i use wi-fi at home as well. so, was wondering why it was still buffering?

 

[nonamedude]

Are you sure its 500MB max? I sure hope not because that is not alot of data. I have had my droid 2 for 3.5 days and I have already used about 200MB.

 

[gino_76ph]

i think its what they call "fair usage policy". but they like to term it as "unlimited" internet but in essence its not.

 

[stiffler]

Are you sure they say Unlimited and its only 500MB? If yes, you can refuse to pay bills, sue them maybe cause 500MB is not enough for listening online radio on daily basis.

About buffering. That happens only before the radio starts, or it happens also when you are listening in middle of song/show?

 

[Smabbage]

500 MB? Oof! I'd be in trouble. I bump 5 Gb each month with my Verizon plan in the U.S. At any rate, depending on the station, the bandwidth requirements will be different. I listen to may last.fm stations via Doubletwist and some stream at 128 kbits/s, others at 96 kbits/s. Some as MP3 and others as AAC etc. You might have a good signal but the bandwidth requirements might be more than your connection can handle. You might have a steel pipe but if it's only 1.3 cm the flow is going to be restricted.