Three major factors that affect streaming quality, which need to be measured, are startup time, audio quality and video quality. Within these factors are specific elements, such as connect time, redirect time, initial buffer time, video frame rate, recovered, lost and dropped packets, and bandwidth utilization. The time it takes to transfer data to the last server from a second and subsequent servers, to which the first server may redirect data. The time it takes to start viewing and hearing a streaming media clip from the time the data arrives in the buffer of the client computer. Audio encoding includes the number of audio channels, bitrate per channel and quaility of original content.
Audio delivery includes the delivered bandwidth and packet delivery.
The higher the encoded bitrate AND its successful delivery to the user, for both audio and video, the higher the quality. Two more pieces of the quality puzzle are encoding quality and delivery quality. Most of the content is streamed at a far lower bitrate. Not only can the client not use the packets, but the packets use up bandwidth on the receiving side, taking up space that could be used for usable packets. Lost packets never make it to the client.