Toward the end of May this year (2016), ATT Uverse will begin capping data use at 650 GB. I have a bundled plan with them right now, with the next to the lowest TV programming plan. By keeping the bundled plan (Internet, TV, Voip) I maintain the use of unlimited data for streaming purposes. I work from home as I am retired but still maintain a small business. I stream audio all day long, use the Internet a lot during the day and watch TV at night. All this is charged to data flow. I’ve been considering cord cutting for almost a year now. However, I have no idea what a 650GB cap would mean to my daily data consumption; let alone all the streaming I’d be doing after moving to Tablo. Your thoughts, please.
Does AT&T give you any way to measure your current usage? Are usage numbers available through the account web page?
What do you use for a router? You can get routers that will keep track of usage on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly basis.
I’ll try to find this out. I was merely wondering if anyone has any sense of “typical” daily usage.
If you’re talking about the Tablo DVR internet usage, it’s not that much unless you’re using Tablo Connect to stream recorded content or live TV outside of your home.
No. I realize that Tablo uses limited Internet. My concern is that, with cord cutting, I will be using a lot more streaming video via two Apple TVs.
Many ISPs provide a way to monitor your data usage. Mine, COX, has a data usage meter that I check on a periodic basis. High quality TV shows stream at about 5 GB/hour, with audio being much less than that, but if you stream a lot of movies or TV, that gives you at least some idea as to how to ballpark your monthly consumption.
I do moderate amounts of video streaming, and I’m in that roughly 200-250 GB/month range. With a 700 GB monthly cap, I’m not overly concerned at the moment.
Thanks. I’ve found a free data use monitor for my network. It runs constantly in the background on my computer. I’ll give it a shot for a month and see what results I get.
I’m not sure how this will relate to your usage, but here is a snapshot of mine for that last few months. I have 2 adults and a teenager in the house. We have streaming to 3 televisions, 1 smartphone, 2 tablets, and 2 laptops. We mostly use Netflix and Live OTT service (playstation Vue or Sling TV).
Hope this helps.
One thing I wanted to mention is that you can throttle your data consumption when streaming video. Some apps, such as Sling TV have this capability built in. Streaming devices have some settings as well, so you can vary from, say 1080P down to 480i, to throttle your data consumption. You’re essentially trading off data consumption vs. video quality.
Monitoring data consumption on your computer may tell you how much data your computer has consumed, but if you have other computers in the house, or media players streaming video to TV sets, you may not see what those devices are consuming. You have to do it in your router, which sees everything going in and out to the internet, or preferrably, use the data usage tool provided by your ISP, if available.
Thanks. Good suggestion.
@Renator - We’ve got a few tips & tricks on how to manage cordcutting with a datacap on the blog: https://www.tablotv.com/blog/cord-cutting-data-cap-tricks/
Thanks. This helps a lot. Someone in our family fell asleep one night while watching a Netflix series. I think it went through 9 episodes. Now all I need to do is simply wait to make the switch until the Apple TV app comes out.
You can turn off the auto play next feature on Netflix. Do it from the Profile settings on the Netflix website. This will preview 9 episodes from streaming lol