A Full Length Movie Is How Many Gigs

We cap Netflix so we get "low def" transmission which goes through our Blu-Ray player which upscales the video the same way it would for an old movie on a DVD. At this setting we use about 225MB to watch a TV program as they tend to be 42 minutes when you remove all the commercials that we now have to scan through (thank you Ronald Reagan).

We cannot use Amazon as their lowest setting is still about 1.2GB an hour and the extra data is not being used on our 52" screen. We so difference in image quality at the higher band rate.

Where we live even DSL is not available so we use Millenicom and pay $70 a month for 20GB of data.

If we are at a hotel or park with free Wifi we stream to a netbook that is connected to the TV with an HDMI cable and stream Netflix videos with no problems. Beats having to watch the Dish or Directtv very limited offerings and having to watch all the commercials on the network channels.

You don't choose the Netflix quality setting on the device, it is a global setting changed online within your account/profile settings. One scenario where this is useful is if you are in a situation like the OP (you have a monthly data cap you are concerned with hitting).

Leaving it at the default "Auto" would suffice for most other uses. When you initially try to stream the video, Netflix (among other things) does a "bandwidth check" to see what quality it can send to you: If it determines you are on a relatively slow 3G connection, it isn't going to stream HD content because it knows you can't support it.

One downside to Auto would be if your connection fluctuates too much, resulting in the video freezing as it readjusts quality - something docj mentioned his son is working on :)

kcny wrote:
"but in many areas you will not be able to get the necessary bandwidth until more places are 4G."

I'm not sure if you've had a bad experience, but I watch Amazon videos on my Verizon 3G hotspot all the time?

If you are concerned with bandwidth, go with NetFlix, as unlike Amazon they let you manually set your quality (bandwidth). Neither Netflix or Amazon "take as much bandwidth as they can get to get you a good picture" They take what they need and adjust if necessary based on what bandwidth you have available.

In addition to my experience at home, doing the math on the 300MB/hr lowest setting for Netflix (assuming that you have a device where you can choose the setting, must won't), that works out to 0.7Mb/s. 3G is defined as greater than 0.2Mb/s, though individual carriers could do better than that and still market it as 3G.

kcny wrote:

If you are concerned with bandwidth, go with NetFlix, as unlike Amazon they let you manually set your quality (bandwidth). Neither Netflix or Amazon "take as much bandwidth as they can get to get you a good picture" They take what they need and adjust if necessary based on what bandwidth you have available.

The topic of "dynamic compression" is a very hot one right now; I have a son who is a computer scientist who works for one of the major players in the game. He is involved in developing improved algorithms so that the compression can be varied seamlessly as your available bandwidth changes.

At present it's pretty easy to see when Netflix (or the other providers) changes your bandwidth since the quality of the picture changes pretty significantly. What he's working on are methods to make the changes very gradual so you might never know that they's slightly reduced your picture quality to compensate for slightly reduced bandwidth.

"but in many areas you will not be able to get the necessary bandwidth until more places are 4G."

I'm not sure if you've had a bad experience, but I watch Amazon videos on my Verizon 3G hotspot all the time?

If you are concerned with bandwidth, go with NetFlix, as unlike Amazon they let you manually set your quality (bandwidth). Neither Netflix or Amazon "take as much bandwidth as they can get to get you a good picture" They take what they need and adjust if necessary based on what bandwidth you have available.

LittleBill wrote:
this question is very loaded.

the rate is completely based on your available bandwidth. if you have netflix not throttled. it will keep testing your bandwidth pipe and use all it can.


thus a "hd" movie will keep compressing till it can play without stuttering even if that mean 1Mbit a second. If your on a fast pipe, it can be 12Mbit a second.


thus it can be anywhere from 600MB-2GB for SD, and significantly higher for HD

This is exactly right for Netflix/Amazon. I have 1Mb/s at home. Netflix and Amazon do OK, not great, with that. Even Hulu, though does poorly. They do use better compression than all other sites, but they take as much bandwidth as they can get to get you a good picture. I think that not only will you run over your total usage quickly, but in many areas you will not be able to get the necessary bandwidth until more places are 4G.

It varies a lot, depending on the movie content
Chase sequences in an action movie use a lot more data than a drama movie with lots of dialog and little scenery change
High deff can use four times as much as SD for the same scene
But I have found
700mb~1gb for 90 minute movie to be the avg
I have both Netflix and Amazon
BTW Amazon has been streaming movies for several years

What is new, is they are bringing out there own Branded Media box/hardware to attach to your tv

It depends on the compression but let me take a look at .. Many

Using MPEG 2, and recording at "Standard" (Which is very low rez, in fact it only gets every other pixel) I show 0.8 to 2.5 Gigs.

MP4 gives better compression and I do a number of shows in MP4.. These are one hour shows. (in fact I have one on the HD now so let me look at it), it is 1.07 Gig for one hour, that was an HD (high rez) I normally use lower quality which can get it down to as low as a quarter gig per hour.

On my MP2 recorders at "Standard" (low) Rez 1 gig per hour is average, at "medium" it's 2 and at High it is 4 Gigs per hour. These are NTSC level recordings. I do not record ATSC here... yet..

This is one reason I'm so against people streaming video on the park Wi-Fi. if the park only has say .707 Gig per hour and you are streaming 500 meg per hour.. That don't leave much for anyone else.

this question is very loaded.

the rate is completely based on your available bandwidth. if you have netflix not throttled. it will keep testing your bandwidth pipe and use all it can.


thus a "hd" movie will keep compressing till it can play without stuttering even if that mean 1Mbit a second. If your on a fast pipe, it can be 12Mbit a second.


thus it can be anywhere from 600MB-2GB for SD, and significantly higher for HD

I have my Netflix set at basic and it reports that it uses 0.3GB per hour.