Forum Discussion

Renita_Holmes's avatar
Renita_Holmes
New Contributor
4 years ago

Has anyone else noticed that different streaming channels eat up more or less data?

I check my data every day, just crazy that way and notice that if I watch some streaming channels they use a lot more data, such as yesterday I watched Peacock and it used the same amount of data as last week when I had two tvs going on streaming with roku all day. 

  • Bruce's avatar
    Bruce
    Honored Contributor III

    It depends from where you stream and what you stream.  As superbigwaff noted, no 2 providers "package" the same content the same way.  As widermouthopen noted, it depends on the video and audio formats:  SD, ED, HD, UHD, Frame Rates (24-120 fps)...as well as lo-res, mid-res or hi-res audio.

    For 1 HD stream, as an example, YouTube requires 7 Mbps...Netflix 5 Mbps...and Discovery+ 4 Mbps.  Roku isn't an accurate comparison because Roku just connects you to these different providers.

    Negotiated speed at the times of streaming may also affect bandwidth.  If your network is congested 1 day, the provider and your streamer may have negotiated a different format than the previous day.

  • Different streaming services may use different video codecs (encode / compress / uncompress / decode) depending on your streaming device's support for different codecs. The amount of data is directly related to the codec used.