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proudworld's avatar
proudworld
New Contributor III
5 years ago

VU vs YouTube TV

I posted a rather angry comment about data spikes/usage last month.  My wife and I are the only users in the household.  We are pretty consistently boring people.  We have never exceed our limit and rarely exceeded 40 GB a day...that would be considered very heavy usage.

Well, at the end of January VUE discontinued it's service.  So, we changed to YouTube TV.

For comparison, The first five days of January with VUE we hit 260+GB.  That's significant given our historical pattern and I still think there is a flaw somewhere.

Again...comparison.  So far this month...4 days in, 39 GB.  I suspect today will be like 10 GB used based on what I'm seeing using YouTube TV.

So roughly 250 GB Vs 50 GB, and the only real change is streaming service.

So..why such a disparity?  Something in the VUE feed vs YouTube TV??  I wanted to try and go high this past Sunday with Superbowl and Phoenix Open going on...still only 13 GB.  By comparison, January 1 with VUE was 59 GB with similar viewing day Bowl games and such.

Just one man's observation.

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  • JP_Sports's avatar
    JP_Sports
    Contributor
    5 years ago

    Ive noticed that as well.  I had Vue for 2 months, and went over the data cap both months.  I’ve had YouTube TV, and I’m lucky if I hit 600 GB for a month.  I use an antenna for locals to save data, but I’d still probably be under.  One reason is YTTV has a built in feature that stops the stream after 4 hours, where Vue did not.  So if you forgot to stop the Vue stream when you shut off your TV, it would continue to run in the background and eat up all your data.  

  • Bruce's avatar
    Bruce
    Honored Contributor III
    5 years ago

    Over 260 GB in 5 days?  That's 52 GB per day.  You'd have to constantly stream 1080p for 24 hours to consume that much data per day.  You're "boring" because you're glued to the TV all month!  Kidding.

    Basically...Vue vs. YouTube respectively...it's 50 GB vs. 10 GB per day.  Something was off.  Either Cox had 3 thumbs on the scale...you were unknowingly streaming in UHD...or an outsider was also on your network.

    Perhaps Cox corrected something after your angry comment about data spikes.

    • proudworld's avatar
      proudworld
      New Contributor III
      5 years ago

      Maybe they did correct somethings.  

      Update.  To date this month...108 GB thru 11 days.  Less than 11 GB per day.  No substantive change in viewing patterns.

      I can't explain it. I did dial down what I could via Firestick settings.  But I did that early last month as well.  By curtailing somethings last month...inconveniently not watching multiple TV's...we came in at 999 GB used.  On pace to do less than 300 GB this month without having changed anything back on setting yet.

      We've never been near that monthly low either.

      Knowing I'm well below usage budget I actually tried to use more data by leaving more TV's on Sunday..10 GB.

      Definitely something in the stream...not completely our end.  I manage our router and I have to manually add a user, not just have a password.  Not that it's an issue.  I have one neighbor within 100 yards.

      So, I'm going to dial up the firestick settings this month and monitor results for a couple weeks.  Will update.

      • Bruce's avatar
        Bruce
        Honored Contributor III
        5 years ago
        manually add a user

        What is that...MAC filtering?  I've read it can be cloned/bypassed.  I'm not suggesting an unauthorized user but only could be an issue for somebody else.

        That was a lot of bandwidth you had with Vue and I couldn't find another contributor complaining about it.  T'was strainge.