Forum Discussion

Damselfly72's avatar
Damselfly72
New Poster
7 years ago

10gb to stream a movie

Really? I was completely out of data, aside from bonus bites. Bought 10gb and ordered a movie from Amazon Prime, (HD). No other devices connected to the network other than the router and the Samsung s...
Data Management
  • Amanda's avatar
    Amanda
    7 years ago

    Hi Damselfly72,


    I believe this is because apparently Amazon is using a higher bitrate and does not seem to allow quality/rate adjustments outside of their own proprietary Fire TV products. Basically this means that Amazon won't automatically adjust itself based on multiple factors (screen size, bandwidth, device capability) like other video providers do, resulting in you having to receive video in the format Amazon has on file. Adjusting this setting using built-in options on devices like Roku's may change what you see, but won't change what you get. Sometimes this will also cause buffering or poor visual quality. Read more here

     

    Regarding your mobile provider... I'm not sure who you have, but many providers are now automatically turning on their own versions of "VDS" to help save mobile data and ease network congestion. This might be enabled on your service plan, so it's worth a check. VDS is enabled for all customers on Gen4 and Gen5 service plans.

     

    I hope I was able to offer some helpful info :) 

     

    -Amanda

GabeU's avatar
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV
7 years ago

You mentioned a router being connected.  Does it have the ability to monitor data usage, and if so, does it have the ability to break the usage down by device? 

 

A two hour film shouldn't use 10GB of data in HD, but a spotty WiFi connection can cause higher data usage, as can things using data that you aren't aware of.  

 

Other than your Smart TV, what devices do you have that utilize your WiFi, and how do you ensure that they cannot connect at any given time?  

 

 

  • Damselfly72's avatar
    Damselfly72
    New Poster
    7 years ago
    This was basically a test. We made sure all other devices were disconnected or turned off. We have another satellite ISP with business class service for our primary provider and had turned off the router and modem for it as well. I only use it for business purposes, not entertainment.
    I could see a spotty connection being an issue at times to cause excessive data usage, but not to this extent. Unfortunately, I don't have a meter on the router connected to the Hughesnet modem.
    • MarkJFine's avatar
      MarkJFine
      Professor
      7 years ago

      There's the remote possibility of another explanation:

       

      An active stream is not just a one-way flow of data. There are all sort of acks, nacks, and checksums that need to get fed back to the source so it knows that the frames are being sent in the correct order.

       

      If (and a big if) those acks are not received back within the particular service's 'acceptance time window' it might imply a nack and resend the series of frames.

       

      Where I'm going with this is that if the gateway is bogged down the latency may be sufficient enough to cause this to happen, if the frames are buffering or otherwise. Certainly sending the same frame sequence twice because of an late ack would cause a 5Gb movie to easily rack up 10Gb.

      • GabeU's avatar
        GabeU
        Distinguished Professor IV
        7 years ago

        MarkJFine

         

        Interesting.  I never knew any of that, though it makes perfect sense.

         

        We really do learn something new every day.  :)