A single 4K stream needs roughly 15-25 Mbps and uses about 7 GB an hour; 1080p needs roughly 5-8 Mbps and about 3 GB an hour. HEVC-encoded streams use roughly half the bitrate of older H.264 streams at the same picture quality, so a device and app that support it stretch the same connection further without dropping resolution. Add up every screen that might run at once in your house — a movie in the living room plus a show in a bedroom plus a tablet in the kitchen is three streams, not one — before you pick a provider's advertised speed tier.

Once your connection clears the Mbps floor for the resolution you watch, the provider's brand stops being the deciding factor and the streaming service's own reliability takes over instead. That is where uptime numbers matter: 99.99% uptime works out to about 53 minutes of downtime a year, which is a different question entirely from whether your home connection can carry the stream in the first place. A fast connection cannot fix a service having a bad night on its own servers, and a reliable service cannot fix a home connection that cannot hold 15 Mbps steady during peak hours.

IP4KTV runs $10 a month on the 12-month plan ($120 total), with a $5, 24-hour trial available to test your connection against the actual service before committing to a full year of anything upfront. That sits well below typical US cable or satellite at $70-130 a month and below streaming bundles at $40-90 a month once you total up their real cost. None of those numbers depend on which internet provider carries the connection into your house — they are separate costs stacked on top of whatever your ISP already charges you every month regardless of which streaming service you eventually choose.