About semiresponsive

A new television purchase has made my data useage a sudden high-priority issue. I'm using more than ever before with no change to my habits. So, I think I just need a little education...   Is there any way to tell is the built-in data saver is working? I understand that it's supposed to limit the speed of video that plays (and I thought it was supposed to limit it to 720, but now I think it's 480).   Some background... I watch streaming video on 3 different devices: a Lenovo Yoga Laptop 730 (which I today learned has an FHD screen); a Vizio D-Series Smart TV (with an HD 720 screen); and a Samsung Smart TV (with a FHD screen). I am what I would consider a heavy TV watcher.    For the last year or so, I've definitely streamed more media than I watched on my satellite. To the point that, on top of my 50GB plan, I've usually always purchased ~20GB of extra data. I decided to cancel my satellite service and apply some of the savings to the extra data I knew I would use. At the time, I owned the laptop, the Vizio and an old Toshiba I plugged a Roku into and for 2.5 months, everything was great. I did purchase some extra-extra data - maybe another 10GB, at most. This made sense too.    On August 31st I bought the Samsung and noticed, almost immediately, a marked increase in the amount of data I'm using. It also happens to be the living room TV where 75% of the streaming happens. When I say marked increase, my data useage doubled with no change in my viewing behavior.    The only "new" thing in this equation is that Samsung TV. I was able to install GlassWire on my laptop and phone and can tell that no data is leaking from those devices. And the bedroom TV (that Vizio) has been on the network for a long time, I doubt it's the problem. I went so far as to take all my IoT devices off the network to make sure nothing had gone rogue. While I haven't done it scientifically, I feel like I can name this Samsung device as the culprit. But it also feels strange that a TV I'm not watching any more than the old one would just... devour data. Unless... the data saver doesn't actually work? (Or maybe it only works on computers not TVs?) I bought myself a router that is supposed to track all the network traffic. My next step (when I get home) is to get that thing online and see if I can isolate the exact useage from each device. But I'm not sure I understand how all this works well enough to make any inferences from the data I'll collect. Let me be clear - I'm not complaning about the speed of the service, the cost of the service, my budget, my viewing habits, my life choices... everything is what is is. I'm just trying to get a handle on what's happening to my data. If anyone has any insight, I'd sure appreciate it!   Edit: In what is probably an unrelated issue, but maybe there's something to do with the speeds and checkins with servers someone mentioned before, my speeds have been somewhat reduced lately. Still fast enough to stream in general with no issues (though Hulu doesn't like my Samsung TV at all and stops to buffer all the time even when other services work fine). https://testmy.net/quickstats/semiresponsive ... View more

On August 31 I noticed a marked increase in the amount of data I'm using. I did, that day, buy my first 1080p TV, but I use data saver (always have, even when the only 1080 screen in the house was a laptop). Shouldn't the data saver be limiting the quality of the video coming in to 720p or less? Shouldn't my data consumption have stayed pretty much the same since the only change has been this model television, not how much I'm watching on it? I did check to make sure there were no unauthorized devices on my network, and it looks good. No changes... except this new TV. Any suggestions? As it was, before this, I was buying at least 50GB more data each month. But this is getting very expensive... ... View more