How To Reduce The Data Rate Used On A Tcl Roku Tv

Streaming services are so commonplace that we often requite little thought to how much data they use until it's besides late. It tin can be a lot, but you can reduce information apply and prevent overages with a few minor changes here and there.

Despite the large number of streaming services and their associated apps, information technology'south safe to say, one of them might be Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, or especially YouTube. All these have ways to alter how much data they swallow, which is especially of import if you have a data cap and/or share bandwidth.

Apparently, of these, Netflix and YouTube will utilise more than data and bandwidth. In fact, you lot're unlikely to experience bandwidth issues if you're merely streaming music but that said, if you lot listen to music all day, it adds up, especially if you're streaming higher quality audio.

Streaming Music? Y'all Should be Okay

After some observation and research, it's difficult to imagine that even with a paltry few gigabytes of mobile data, anyone could stream their way over their limit with Pandora or Spotify, as long every bit y'all pay attending to quality settings.

For Spotify, the "standard quality" setting on the desktop awarding, according to Spotify's website, is ~160 kbps, which is known every bit "high quality" on mobile.

On a desktop or laptop, Premium Spotify subscribers can enable "high quality" (320kbps) streaming in the Spotify app'due south settings, which is equal to "Extreme Quality" on the mobile app (confusing isn't it?).

Regardless of what Spotify calls their audio quality tiers, not-Premium users can expect the highest quality music to stream at 160kbps (again, "Standard Quality" on the desktop, "High Quality" on the mobile app).

While Spotify's desktop app will only stream music at 160kbps (unless you're a Premium subscriber), the Spotify mobile app tin stream music at a lower 96kbps ("Normal Quality") to better minimize your mobile data footprint.

To understand how that translates to you and your information caps, we used this streaming calculator to plug in 96kbps and 160kbps.

At 96kbps, you lot volition consume virtually 42MB of data in one hour, which translates to 0.04GB. To stream 1GB of data, you'd need to stream for 24 to 25 hours.
At 160kbps, data employ climbs to about 70MB in an hour, or 0.07GB. This means you tin can stream 1GB of data in just under 15 hours.

Raising the audio quality setting will give you a somewhat better listening experience just apparently utilize more than data, more quickly.

Meanwhile, Pandora states on their website:

Pandora on the Web plays 64k AAC+ for gratuitous listeners and 192kbps for Pandora One subscribers. All in-home devices play 128kbps audio, and mobile devices receive a variety of dissimilar rates depending on the capability of the device and the network they are on, but never more than 64k AAC+. (emphasis ours)

Pandora likewise allows y'all to bump up the quality (to 64kbps maximum) in its settings, only is configured by default to lower quality audio.

Again, plugging in the numbers, nosotros run across how much data Pandora uses.

Streaming at 64kbps will consume about 28MB or 0.03GB of data, which means yous can expect to hitting a gigabyte in only over 36 hours.
At 128kbps, hourly data use literally doubles to 56MB or 0.05GB, and that means your listening time will effectively halve to a little over xviii hours.

Deport in mind, Pandora's mobile information bitrate never exceeds 64kbps, so that's probable the most interesting number to mobile data users. Dissimilar Spotify however, you can probably get away with using the college quality setting, equally long as it doesn't bear on playback too adversely.

Be Careful with Video Streaming

Video streaming is going to always use far more data than music by virtue of the mere fact that it's video. But, at that place are still settings you tin can conform to convalesce how much information they utilize.

Indeed, if you have Netflix installed as an app, you lot tin forcefulness it to just stream over Wi-Fi thus ensuring you don't mistakenly eat into your mobile data allowance.

If you apply Netflix at dwelling, such as in a browser, or yous stream to your Chromecast or on your Roku however, you need to first access the data settings via Netflix.com. To do this, click "Your Acount" from your profile bill of fare.

On the adjacent screen, click "playback settings" in the "My Profile" department.

In the "Playback Settings", you can at present conform your data usage per screen. Commonly information technology is set to "Motorcar" but you lot tin can strength information technology to play at depression quality (up to 0.3GB per hr) or medium (up to 0.vii per hour). If you're lucky enough to be able to stream high quality video, you lot can expect to eat 3GB to 7GB per hour.

Setting Netflix's per screen data usage to "depression" doesn't mean you can at present kickoff streaming Netflix videos via your mobile data connexion. It does mean your dwelling Net connexion is less likely to crumble under the stress of other members of the household using it at the same time, which, if they're watching YouTube, tin happen in a bustle.

YouTube, a Mobile Information Hog

YouTube is past far the biggest video streaming site on earth, so yous tin can expect to contribute a lot of data and bandwidth to information technology. Information technology's difficult to simply watch 1 YouTube video, and chances are pretty proficient, most people watch YouTube videos every day.

Therefore, it's peculiarly of import, if yous watch YouTube on your phone over a mobile connexion, to check your YouTube settings.

Do this by tapping the options dots in the upper-right corner, and so tap "Settings -> Full general" and tick the box next to "limit mobile data usage." This volition assure that you lot tin can only stream HD YouTube videos over a Wi-Fi connection.

This won't preclude yous from watching videos on YouTube when you're out and about, it simply means you won't be able to watch HD videos unless you're on Wi-Fi. It's a good solution but honestly, the way YouTube sucks us in, we know how easy information technology can be to quickly rack up a large watched video count.

Upon first load, all our videos default to 480P, just at that place's a quick pull a fast one on you tin employ to ensure they play at a lower resolution. Click on your account picture in the upper-right corner of YouTube and click the settings gear.

On the side by side screen, click the "Playback" link and nether "video playback quality" and choose the "I have a slow connection" option.

After using YouTube with this pick enabled, our videos defaulted to 360P.

Yeah but, How Much Data Do YouTube Videos Utilise?

The thing near YouTube videos are that even at lower resolutions, they tin can still eat a lot of data. How much information? It's hard to say exactly since different Netflix, YouTube videos aren't consequent from ane uploader to the next, merely we can take some measurements and make some observations.

Let's take an like shooting fish in a barrel example. Everyone knows the video Gangham Style. It's been viewed over ii-billion times, it's available in 144P through 1080P, and so permit's queue that video up in each of it'due south unlike resolutions and see how much data that video consumes using the firewall and information monitoring tool Glasswire.

The first time nosotros load whatever video, it has to load the sound track as well, so it takes a little longer and the file size is initially larger. From thereon, the sound track is cached, and then when we change resolutions, YouTube merely loads the video $.25, and then the file size is relatively smaller and it doesn't take equally long either.

Gangham Mode is but over iv minutes long (4:12 to exist verbal), and co-ordinate to this source, the boilerplate audio bitrate is (probably) about 128kbps, which is approximately 4MB for a iv-minute long vocal.

In the following tabular array, we present our Gangham Style findings. Each video's observed size is adjusted to include the size of the audio rails (as if y'all were loading each resolution the starting time time). This isn't exact nor meant to be official, it's just a rough idea of the size of an average pop music video with its accompanying audio runway.

Video Resolution

~Size + 4MB Sound Rails

144P

half dozen.6MB

240P

9.6MB

360P

fifteen.2MB

480P

25.2MB

720P

44.6MB

1080P

73.5MB

The takeaway hither is pretty apparent. Don't lookout man Hd videos on your mobile connection and even at lower resolutions, YouTube videos tin can really add up.

How much do they add together upwardly over the grade of time?

We cleared our results from Glasswire and merely went from popular music video to pop music video – twenty in all – at the default resolution (480P) and observed how much data they used.

As you can see, twenty popular music videos at 480P consumed over 400MB of information, which averages out to effectually 20MB per video.

The bottom line here is YouTube's information footprint tin add up very speedily, only actually any video you stream will practice that, then yous desire to make sure you merely lookout video on a not-metered Wi-Fi connection.

Obviously, these four services aren't the only ones. There's Hulu, Amazon Prime number, Soundcloud, Rdio, and many more. For everything else, have a infinitesimal to peruse any settings in your apps and accounts to brand sure yous're streaming at a mobile information-friendly bitrate, when possible.

Finally, if at that place is an option that prevents watching HD video (or in the case of Netflix, any video) using mobile data, plow that on as well.

If yous have anything you'd like to add, whatsoever questions, comments, or observations, delight share them with us in our discussion forum.