Forum Discussion

beckyfairless33's avatar
beckyfairless33
Freshman
8 years ago

I cannot use the on demand channels on my dish tv

I had dish and hughesnet internet bundle installed in early September and have not been able to use the on demand feature because it keeps stopping to buffer every three minutes, or less.  I have bee...
buffering
on demand
Performance
slow
  • Amanda's avatar
    Amanda
    8 years ago

    Hi everyone,

     

    Please see GabeU and BirdDog's posts regarding Video Data Saver. If you turn it off and the buffering stops, this is because the video service (in this case an on-demand provider) is hard set to HD either by the provider or the user. It is worthwhile checking to see if this can be changed from your end, but if not, our recommendation is to download video with the data saver turned off overnight so it does not impact your data usage.

     

    If turning off Video Data Saver does not resolve your issue, please let us know. Keep in mind this is all dependant on your account having monthly plan data remaining.

     

    ~Amanda

BirdDog's avatar
BirdDog
Assistant Professor
8 years ago

The reason it is buffering so bad is it is trying to reduce the qaulity which I do not think on demand allows. It pushes the stream at HD in many cases. Doesn't matter the Data Saver option, that just chokes speed of the stream when on.

 

Boils down to leaving data saver on and buffering or turning it off and less buffering. Either way you are going to use lots of data using on demand as it pretty much streams in HD most of the time. A video in HD is a set amount of data, if you watch it with data speed choked or unchoked it will still use the same amount if the whole video is watched.

 

To clarify, the video data saver option only works for streaming sites that have different definition options that automatically lower based on connection speed the way I understand. It chokes the speed to attempt to stream at the lowest definition available. On demand has no such option, it pushes at least 480p at the least for older video but usually at least 720p.