My gym is a large facility, only about 8 years old, and I live in a suburb of Washington DC. A couple of years ago I tried to stream workouts at the gym and it was erratic, pausing, disconnecting. I contacted the management and asked about the WiFi and they told me they were updating it and check it the following week. I did, and it worked fine. Fast forward a year, recently, I tried streaming and it was very erratic, pausing the workout for a minute at times. My husbands career is in IT, different field. He had me download a speed test app to check data coming into the gym. It went from 35 mbps to 10 to 3 to 35. My husband said I should be able to stream my workouts with 1 mbps, but didn’t know if the erratic nature of the connection is what was causing the playback to drop. I talked to management who said they had done nothing different with their WiFi for it not to work well, and they contacted their IT. The answer was what my husband indicated, playback should be okay with 1 mbps and that people play Netflix at the gym with no problem. So, my husband said for me to try and play Netflix when my workout stops playing and see if it works. So I tried STS yesterday, and it kept pausing. Every time it paused, I switched to Netflix and that worked fine, no pausing. My question is do you have any idea why playback would be so horrible at the gym? I have gone when the gym is virtually empty with no classes going on, and when the gym is packed. No difference. I have tried playback in the separate spin room, and various parts of the gym, and it doesn’t seem to matter. The gym is located in a commercial area, but not with a lot of offices or places of business. Seeing as Cathe has a large facility, I was wondering if this is a problem in general with gyms, or is it a problem with my phone? I have an iphone 7. Thank you so much for any guidance with this.
Trouble with streaming Cathe OnDemand at a gym facility
- Thread starter jackier
- Start date
Hi Jackier,
There is no way your going to be able to have a problem free stream at 1 mbps. Gyms usually don't have great wifi and when you get a lot of members using the wifi at the same time you're going to have a lot of stalls as the bandwidth available will be divided among all of the members. When it comes to playing a stream two things come in to play. #1 The download speed and #2 ping speed. Both of these things are important. Even if your download speed is fine a slow ping of greater than 20ms can cause stalls. Generally speaking you want a ping speed of less than 20ms and a download speed > than 20 mbps. You can certainly play streaming videos at a speed less than 20mbps, but problems will increase as your download speed decreases. And if you have a slow download speed and a slow ping you're going to have issues. Netflix doesn't broadcast at the same quality and bit rate as we do, plus they probably get preferred bandwidth from your Gyms ISP. Have you tried playing our videos at a lower quality setting instead of using auto or high quality? This may help you, but with your Gym's wifi jumping all around from 3 to 35 mbps and perhaps lower at times you're going to have issues.
There is no way your going to be able to have a problem free stream at 1 mbps. Gyms usually don't have great wifi and when you get a lot of members using the wifi at the same time you're going to have a lot of stalls as the bandwidth available will be divided among all of the members. When it comes to playing a stream two things come in to play. #1 The download speed and #2 ping speed. Both of these things are important. Even if your download speed is fine a slow ping of greater than 20ms can cause stalls. Generally speaking you want a ping speed of less than 20ms and a download speed > than 20 mbps. You can certainly play streaming videos at a speed less than 20mbps, but problems will increase as your download speed decreases. And if you have a slow download speed and a slow ping you're going to have issues. Netflix doesn't broadcast at the same quality and bit rate as we do, plus they probably get preferred bandwidth from your Gyms ISP. Have you tried playing our videos at a lower quality setting instead of using auto or high quality? This may help you, but with your Gym's wifi jumping all around from 3 to 35 mbps and perhaps lower at times you're going to have issues.
THANK YOU for the explanation. I was shocked in speaking to the management about streaming workouts, they were not aware that was a “thing”. In fact, their IT person wanted me to tell them what I learned, if anything, from you and the other web site I was having a problem streaming a workout. Because their answer was there should be no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do that. My son, who is a computer science major, came home on Sunday and I told him about my problem and he suggested the same thing you said. Try playing it at a lower quality setting. I haven’t yet, but I will. And I will pass on the info you shared with me. (Even the other fitness website got back to me and said there shouldn’t be a problem streaming and had no idea why I couldn’t.). Im hoping this will solve the issue because I stream at home occasionally, but love being able to utilize the gym and all its equipment.
Wonderful, glad it worked for you.