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Video Data Saver...What a Difference When It's OFF

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monicakm
Senior

Video Data Saver...What a Difference When It's OFF

I was reading a thread here last night and ran across "Video Data Saver".  I knew it existed but decided to turn it off to see what kind of difference it made in streaming You Tube Videos.  WOW!  No buffering for the first 10 videos I watched and then just barely any on the next few.  Made watching videos on the computer pleasant again.  Does anyone know how much more data is consumed when VDS is off?

24 REPLIES 24

I think I was asking you @maratsade 🙂

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Well, Monica, I don't consider myself a HughesNet technical wiz at all. 🙂

 


@monicakm wrote:

I think I was asking you maratsade 🙂


 

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@monicakm 

 

360p will use the same amount of data, regardless of the VDS being on or off, and no matter how much buffering happens: i.e. if you had a five minute clip that played smoothly all the way through, and a five minute clip that buffered every ten seconds, and both clips were in 360p, they would use the same amount of data to watch them, though the latter would take longer than five minutes to play because of the buffering, of course.  

 

As for why your 360p item is streaming more smoothly with the VDS off, though the description of the VDS is given for a situations under ideal conditions, it can still help with streaming even when there are peak usage slowdowns and such, and even for lower resolutions..  Even if your speeds were normally not that good, or there was a lot of congestion due to a lot of people being online, the VDS can still help, even with lower than HD vids, like you're seeing.  But, again, there is no more data used, as long as it's still streaming in 360p.  It's primarily designed for lowering HD streaming to SD to save data, but it can still help to smooth out SD and LD streaming, too.

Thanks Gabe.  It is definitely helping!  And I don't mind the lower resolution to help my handicapped data limits.  Next week will be a different story...fingers crossed 😉