Forum Discussion

GabeU's avatar
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV
8 years ago

Streaming experience....

For the first time I tried the On Demand option with my DirecTV.  I wasn't planning on leaving the service connected, but only try it to see how well it worked with Gen5.  It worked well, but it chew...
maratsade's avatar
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV
8 years ago
GabeU wrote:

For the first time I tried the On Demand option with my DirecTV.  I wasn't planning on leaving the service connected, but only try it to see how well it worked with Gen5.  It worked well, but it chewed right through the data as there is no way to adjust the resolution with DTV's On Demnad Service.  I streamed a 43 minute episode of LockUp and it used about 700MB of data, but it only took a few minutes to download the entire episode.  It went very well.  

 

Then the bad, though this has nothing to do with Hughesnet.  I reset the network settings on the DTV Genie, which cut the connection, but it kept trying to reconnect with just about everything I did thereafter, or at least asking me if I wanted to reconnect, over and over again.  After a couple of hours of getting really annoyed and trying everything and anything to stop it, I ended up doing a complete factory reset, losing everything I had recorded on my DVR.  It wasn't that big of a deal as there was nothing on there that isn't going to be on again within the next couple of weeks, but it was a bit annoying, nonetheless.  

 

But, at least now I know that streaming works well with Gen5.  I have a Netflix app on my Smart TV, and I know that I can adjust the definition at the source with Netflix, so I may very well sign up for Netflix and do some occasional streaming.  

 

I only stream Netflix on the laptop or the iPad.  Sometimes I connect the laptop to the TV set via an hdmi cable, even though my TV can connect to the network and it has Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other apps there.  I don't want the TV to think it has been given permission to connect to the network whenever it wants, so I have never set it up that way.  

 

I only stream in low def, even though I now have 50 gigs a month to play with.  I still don't see much difference between LD and HD, to be honest. LD works just fine for me, and I can make the data last longer.