Streaming / Downloading / Bandwidth

Stand to be corrected on all of this………

I think the film would be the same total amount of data, but likely to use different bandwidth….since the film will stream in real time (90 minute film will stream for 90 minutes) but would probably download a lot faster. If it downloaded 4 times faster than real time playback then it would be using 4 times the bandwidth for a quarter of the time. If a data allowance is caped at say 30GB then the impact of watching versus downloading the film would be the same (e.g. 1.5GB or whatever)

Not sure about Virgin they used to have a bad name for “traffic management” – not sure if that still applies or if they have a fair use cap on their unlimited service.

John, if they throttle you it’ll be to 25% of your normal speed (or used to be). Ive had Virgin cable for a long time and used to get throttled in the early days, I honestly can’t remember the last time it happened to me and I watch on demand almost exclusively.

In short, don’t worry about it. If it happens you’ll know about.

Bandwidth is so abundant now, unless your in the top 5 or 10% of abusers your not going to be throttled on an unlimited connection.

I’m with Talk Talk and hover around 1000GB (1TB) per month and never been throttled. I’d imagine Virgin unlimited would be similar. But even at a quarter of the cap, your unlikely to get near 250GB, given your not a family of 7 and (big and) have access to television, somthing we don’t have.

BL mentioned being ‘throttled’ daily at one point, this was not throttling because of his over use but because Virgin had over subscribed in his area. They call that “traffic shaping” , basically throttleing all for the communal good. Ie cos they are greedy.

So i wouldn’t worry. Also when streaming you will download the video to Cache within the 1st quater of the film, or most services do. You can test this by turning your Internet off halfway through the movie,  I found this out by accident, but I’ve found it rings true with most serices. Not sure about sky though.

Ether way the film size is going to be about the same, if you measure  apples to apples, through I find you can get the same films in different sizes, if your willing to a drop in resolution. I personally always opt for 720p when given the choice, as it’s about half that of a full HD.

a 4k film will be in the region of 15 to 25GB in size, 720p about 700Mb-GB, 1080 about 1.5GB to 2.5Gb bit rate and video lenght depending.

Fair play for how much data you use each month – I’m impressed 🙂 but not sure I follow your reasoning….

If you stream a 2GB film it will use 2GB of data, and if you download it it will use 2GB of data (probably in a shorter time). As Duke says streaming is downloading, but stored/cached only temporarily.

If you stream a lot more than you d/l, then that will account for a bigger bite out of your total data usage, but surely if you downloaded all that streamed content the data usage would be the same?

Only applying my layman’s logic here (so could have it all wrong)

Virgin may not ‘count’ streaming from their sites when administering caps. I believe BT (when it had its Sky rival) did not count BT TV downloads at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Since the advice above I found (on virgin) it doesn’t stab you for downs only ups as you say PM. My original concern was streams – downloads as you say blacklion. All the info has helped, as a rule I only download and that’s mainly Windows updates. Now I have a smart box it made me think.

I seem to recall that Windows 10 can send updates to other computers connected to the internet – peer to peer uploads of the updates.

Might want to look into switching it off, as you might be uploading updates to people.

How-To Geek  :good:

Looks like a £20 set up fee. No way they would charge £150, it would put way to many people off.

I recall moving from sky plus to sky HD, and they wanted to charge £30 in them days. I argued with the sales person, saying I had all the lines in place, she said on, on record, that the sky plus cables needed swapping, I knew they didn’t. So when the guy came, took two seconds to ‘install’ it. I wrote to sky, with a written account of my conversion and they credited my account with the £30 a few months later.

If she would never of said that about my wires not being compatible and needed a swap, I’d of not had a leg to stand on, as he did come and ‘insall’ my box. So I was lucky, bit I was pressing the girl in the phone what justifies the £30 when I had already paid £30 for sky installation, then £30 to upgrade from sky to sky+ (as you need an extra line per room), so she then said I need ‘high definition’ wires, mine was the old ‘low def’ wires. Which made me chuckle inside.