Broadband forum: 1.5mbps - is it enough

If the speed you mention is the "advertised" speed, your actual will be about half. Especially if you're talking about DSL.

And, as Bob says, you will have to wait.

Pressed the wrong key on previous post. Have Netflix and a good solid DSL 3.0 meg connection. Most of the time I get 4 dots at the bottom of the Netflix screen indicating I am able to receive about a 720p picture with some compression. If I had a 4-5 meg connection I would be getting 4 dots + HD [screen actually says HD after the 4 dots and I assume this is without a lot of compression. However the 4 dots picture is very good even without the HD.

I seriously doubt that at 1.5 megs your picture quality would be very good [lots of compression] since that is not a whole bunch of bandwidth. It should be noted that my DSL connection is not shared with anyone else like some cable connections. Another poster also commented that the advertised speed is seldom what you get under most conditions. As an example, I am in L.A. CA today on my sisters computer which is advertised as a 1.5 meg connection. Running an actual speed test [several test programs] shows that I am actually getting about 760 meg at 4:10p.m. local time; about 1/2 the advertised speed.

You can try the 1.5 meg connection but I think you might be disappointed in the picture you get. There might also be quite a bit of stopping and starting to fill the buffer. One thing you did not mention is how are you getting the Netflix signal? Roku box, XBox 360, over wireless connection, etc and these could also affect the picture quality.

If you really enjoy movies like I do - drink less beer and save the money for the high speed connection. There are no hangovers from movies, LOL

Have a great day.

We have a slow 1.5 connection here, and just bought a 40" TV. Netflix works great, either on the computer, or on the big screen via a Roku box. Occasionally (which is to say maybe every few days) the picture will break up and pixillate for a few seconds, but this is very rare.

I would definately suggest trying the slowest speed first since they are alway happy to upgrade you later, but going back down can be problematic (we did a free trial of a faster connection, and neither noticed or could measure any increase in speed, but once we cancelled things got a lot slower! Though still fast enough for the Roku box).