I've been trialing a few services, and noticed that when watching the BT Sport FHD channels via Rapid, I was actually getting quite a low quality stream. I checked the stream bitrate via VLC and it was showing as around 2500-3000.
I checked the bitrate for the same channel with another provider I am trialling, and the bitrate was 7000-8000. The stream was quite clearly higher quality.
I can only conclude from this that Rapid is capping the bitrate of FHD channels. This is a shame, because apart from that channel switching and stability was very good.
The other provider (that actually does have FHD channels) is €19/month, which is quite a bit more expensive.
Is it common practice to cap stream bitrates? How can I find a provider that actually provides full HD streams for the channels that say they are full HD?
All streams are capped, some upscaled, some downscaled, do you know at what bitrate is a FHD? 10-15mbps @25fps, 50/60fps more than 20mpbs, so no provider will stream at raw rate.
Try a few and see for yourself, also don't forget that a single channel can change framerates/resolution during the day, from FHD, to HD to SD, as providers have auto-swap when a stream is down the next lower quality stream picks up.