The worst chat service I've ever experienced

Hopefully one of the reps will be able to help with the Video Optimizer being missing. 

For reference, the way it actually works is that when it detects streaming activity, it throttles the available speed for that activity, causing the streaming service itself to automatically reduce the resolution, so you use less data. You can accomplish this same thing with most streaming services by setting the resolution either at the source or while viewing the content. The lower the resolution, the less data the streaming will use.

I'm not sure what it throttles to with Gen 6, but with Gen 4 and Gen 5 it's about 3 - 3.5Mbps. 

Also, streaming can be impacted by the combination of the high latency inherent to geostationary satellite internet and system congestion, the latter of which is, unfortunately, most prominent during primetime, when the largest number of people are trying to stream. That congestion will vary from beam to beam and gateway to gateway because of their individual system load at the given time, though more heavily loaded beams/gateways tend to see more congestion, of course. Because of this, how much data a person will actually save with the VDO on vs off/paused can also vary, as if the speed is significantly impacted by congestion, the resolution may already be low enough that the VDO won't really make any difference. But either way, streaming is a very data intensive activity. Even in SD, it can use upward of 1GB or more per hour of streaming, depending on the streaming service.