# Netflix data usage



## mark1 (21 Feb 2012)

Just a question to see if anyone has come across this, we got netflix under duress ( 11 and 12 ur old daughter ) for a free months trial and living in a rural area have 3 broadband under the NBS scheme,got a message last night to say our data allowance (25mb) was used up so I rang 3 to see what the story was. They said we had used our allowance for the month and an additional 58euro worth before it automatically cuts off, we are in the last month of and 18month contract and had been using up to this month 18 to 22 MB a month.needless to say won't be signing up for this long term, just a heads up in case any one else is thinking of a ( free ) trial.


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## serotoninsid (21 Feb 2012)

You can't use a streaming video service with 3G midband - it's totally out of the question.  Stop using it today if you have not already done so.


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## mark1 (21 Feb 2012)

serotoninsid said:


> You can't use a streaming video service with 3G midband - it's totally out of the question.  Stop using it today if you have not already done so.



Thanks for that, I'm a bit behind with all the tech stuff, my wife signed up for it and the kids set it up on wii but it's gone again, just as well 3 had a cut off point or we would be facing a massive bill at the end of the month


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## Guns N Roses (21 Feb 2012)

mark1 said:


> just as well 3 had a cut off point or we would be facing a massive bill at the end of the month


 
I believe all broadband providers have to have a cutoff point to comply with the relevant legislation.


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## awfulpest (21 Feb 2012)

clearly mark has been successfully using netflix using 3g broadband, so this isn't true. Too successfully.

The issue here is the 25 gig download limit.

Netflix will have different quality settings, High Def, Medium and low, going from 2gigs per hour, .7 gigs per hour to low which might be .3 gigs per hour.

As the wii can't do HD, if you stick with the low setting you should be fine, you could watch 3 hours at the lowest setting for 1 gig, or 75 hours for 25 gigs, or in simple terms 25 movies a month

Which is a lot of tv and movies, obviously you need to leave space for your other internet activities as well. if you stream a lot of videos or download a lot of stuff then this will eat into the limit.

So the answer here is to restrict the amount they use it. Maybe 3 broadband have an area on their website where customers can view their usage for the month? Meteor do. You can check this periodically to see how much the kids have been using the service.

3 also have a 60 gig service, it's 10 quid more than the NBS one.

So why restrict yourself to not having netflix just cause you live in the stix? This is what it's there for.


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## Boyd (21 Feb 2012)

Thats some good points AwfulPest. Also worth nothing for the OP its 25GB not MB, there's a world of difference!

Even at .3GB per hour though I think they'd struggle for data allowance in a month. Especially family I imagine they'd easily watch 3 hours of TV per day, plus youtube usage, plus Wii online gaming etc. Thats surely 1GB per day, ignoring lazy weekend days watching a full series of The Wire etc! I'd say the extra €10 for the 60GB data usage would be a good idea.

Based on feedback on here, Three seems to be one of the worst companies regarding customer support and feedback so I wouldnt be surpised if they didnt have a data usage montitor.


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## mark1 (21 Feb 2012)

Thank you awful pest and username123 for your input, on the data usage I had taken the card out of the dongle and put it into a wifi modem, when I spoke to 3 they told me I would have received an SMS so I put the card back into the dongle this morning to check,sure enough there are 4 or 5 alerts first to say the monthly allowance was nearly used up, there is then a message for each 10euro,first one was at 14.19 and the last one was at 16.19 so 58 euro for 2 hrs, asked them were the films any good? Nah not really!!anyway lesson learned


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## wishbone (27 Feb 2012)

I subscribed on Friday to Netflix for the month's free trial.  I've computed that we watched 340mins of TV using Netflix over the weekend.  Of this, 94mins was for the movie Flubber which was excellent quality I must admit.  The rest was Fawlty Towers which is (not technically speaking here) a square screen rather than widescreen.

When I checked my broadband usage on Friday it was 800MB.  I checked today and it is 6.42GB.  So 5.62GB used for approx 340 mins of TV - which on average works out at 1GB per hour of TV.  

There was no time lag or latency issue which I sometimes experience with RTE Player, I have a VGA cable connection from my PC to my TV (not HDMi).

Hope that helps.
Wishbone


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