Forum Discussion
Streaming question
"since everything is on LOW data useage, will we still be able to watch streaming video when we run out of data "
Most likely, no.
Well it says for Netflix it only needs up to 3 MB to stream in standard def. Which is what believe I have each user set as now.
PlutoTV it works " alright" but due to it being LIVE tv.. It does buffer at times.
Liz and GabeU What do ya'll think?
- maratsade3 years agoDistinguished Professor IV
Cool. I'm sure it'll work just fine for you. Please report your experience.
- MarkJFine3 years agoProfessor
It's the latency on satellite that causes the buffering, not the speed. Just so happens that the lower the resolution, the fewer pings are required, so latency has less of an impact. In general, the speed provided is sufficient to stream, but the latency, which is directly worsened by network congestion might not.
- GabeU3 years agoDistinguished Professor IV
There's not really anything I can add. Like Mark mentioned, while the speed may be adequate, the higher latency inherent to geostationary satellite internet can and often does have a negative effect.
It might work though.
I can't remember if it's been mentioned to you before or if you've happened to see it mentioned to others on here, but you may want to look into PlayOn Cloud. It's a service that records your chosen movie or TV episode on a cloud based DVR, then converts it to an mp4 file which you can download, either manually, automatically or by scheduling. You can then watch the item on any device that can play mp4 files, such as computers, tablets, smart TVs and even some DVD or Blu Ray players. You can copy the files to a USB flash drive or USB HDD and then connect it to a device to watch them. It's a great option for internet services with both limited amounts of high speed data, like HughesNet, and even more so when regular streaming doesn't tend to work all that well.
The benefits are that there is no buffering, as you're watching from an already downloaded file, and you can choose when to download the files, such as during the Bonus Zone period. I've also found that it tends to use less data overall than regular streaming, such as the file of a two hour, 1080p movie from Netflix being only around 2.3GB, and with 720p and 480p resolution being even smaller. And all files you download are yours to keep, watching whenever and however many times you feel like.
You can buy a monthly plan, which comes with a set number of recording credits (though you can always buy more) and a level of permanent cloud storage, or just the recording credits, for which you have seven days to download the recorded item before it gets purged from their servers. I've always purchased recording credits rather than a monthly plan.
PlayOn Cloud doesn't work with all streaming services, but it does with most of the major ones. You can see which ones near the bottom of the page in the link. And, of course, you have to have an account with those streaming services, like you would when you stream from them in the normal manner. It also requires an Android or Apple device for the PlayOn Cloud app, which is what you use to set up the recordings, though you can download the files with any devices. If you don't have an Android or Apple device you can run an Android virtual machine on your Windows computer, though I don't know exactly how that's done.
Anyway, just keep it in mind as an option. Both maratsade and I use it. I've built up quite a little library of movies and TV shows since I started using it about three or so years ago.
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