Data overage on my internet bill?

[TheFarseer]

We switched to YouTube TV about 2 years ago. Nothing else has changed about our internet usage, so now, just last month, we got alerted we were at 95% on our data usage but our cycle was resetting that night so it was OK. Just now, I got alerted we are at 75% and no where close to the end of the month. We can go unlimited, I’m told, for $40. But if I have to pay that extra, there’s almost no point to having streaming TV. They have to have adjusted the amount of data we can use down because this has never been an issue before. Anyone else have a similar problem? Have internet providers adjusted to screw streamers?

[lagomorph777]

1. Who's your provider?

...sounds pretty sucky.

[TheFarseer]

2. Cox - "our friend in the digital age"

[lagomorph777]

3. You need to find some better friends.

[BeerBarrelPolka]

4. LOL

[AZSkiffyGeek]

5. Cox has a data breakdown on your account page.

You can see where the high usage is and figure from there.
What is your data cap? I have a terabyte a month from Cox, and I've only hit the cap once, like you last month. I had one day where I hit 200GB that was the only difference, it was a day I downloaded several new games for my XBox.

[TheFarseer]

7. I've never logged in

might have to set up a password and all that but so annoying to monitor usage. I think the lady said I get 1.2 terabytes.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

9. That's what I have as well

This month so far I've had two days around 50, on both I downloaded games in addition to streaming for pretty much all day. Last month I had two days that hit 200, and they put me just over the top.

[highplainsdem]

12. Streaming TV can sometimes use as much as 4GB an hour, but that's still a few hundred

hours before you hit that limit. Anyone in your household leaving TV on all night?

[TheFarseer]

13. No

I’m really not sure why this is a problem all of the sudden. Obviously it would make sense if we had just switched to streaming TV. I can’t think of anything that’s different.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

15. Did you recently upgrade your Cox plan?

Get a new tv?
It's possible that the streaming settings changed - it may be set to "use highest quality available" or something similar - and then defaulting to 4K ultra without your knowing.
Edit: The other possiblility is that Cox has just started enforcing this again after slacking off during the height of the pandemic last year? That wouldn't surprise me, honestly.

[highplainsdem]

17. Good point about 4K. That's at least 7 GB an hour.

[PoliticAverse]

19. Is someone stealing your WiFi?

You do need to login into your Comcast account and check your usage over the past few months.

Also have you just started streaming things in 4K?

[TheFarseer]

20. I'll have to change my password

To make sure and multiple people have said check settings for streaming quality so I’ll have to do that. Thanks to everyone!

[highplainsdem]

6. What's your data cap? I've read that streaming TV can use a few GB an hour. I don't have

a data cap so don't keep track of my own usage much, but there are times my tablet and laptop use over 50 GB, and I'm sure the TV usually at least doubles that.

Editing to add, now that I think about it, that the TV I stream is usually at least several GB a day, even though that's only a fraction of what I watch. If it were all streaming it would probably be close to 500 GB (a month) just because I watch so much news, and often have it on when I'm not really watching.

[hunter]

8. My wife and I live in the land of "DVD Quality."

We pay $8.99 a month for Netflix.

Higher quality video simply doesn't work on our inexpensive DSL connection.

Is there some sort of setting you can adjust?

[Klaralven]

10. Streaming at 6 Mbit/s is equal to 2.7 GBytes/hr

[Elessar Zappa]

11. I had to get an unlimited data on my Comcast plan.

I stream pretty much all day, so I was going over 1 terabyte a month by quite a bit. It was more economical for me to get the unlimited plan.

[blogslug]

16. I think you can change your screen resolution to SD with YouTube TV

That will help lower your data usage.

[Blue_Adept]

18. Helpful tip

If you're viewing all your stuff on something like a Roku or an Apple TV, make sure to set your video for streaming in either some apps or across the board to 720p instead of 1080p. That'll cut a decent chunk of the bandwidth down if you do a lot of streaming. For most people, with TV sets doing automatic upconversion to 1080p, you'll never notice the difference unless you're really attuned to it. It's not like going between SD and HD but just shades of HD. And size of your viewing screen as well.

When they finally instituted caps here last year, 1tb, I shifted everything to that since I do all streaming on a 70" set. It reduced what I was downloading significantly.