Streaming on Satellite Internet

More people watch video over the internet than over broadcast television.¹ Good quality streaming is a basic expectation most people have for their internet service, but it’s one that remains elusive to satellite internet customers.

If you’ve dealt with slow, grainy video or massive data overage charges in the past, you might have given up on trying to watch online video at all. Fortunately, there are several ways for satellite customers to access high-quality video without incurring outrageous data rates. Read on to see if any of these tips and tricks work for you.

Viasat offers plans with higher speeds, which is good for those who want to stream higher quality video or have multiple devices streaming at once. The tradeoff is that higher quality burns through data even faster, so unless ultra-high definition movie night is only a monthly indulgence, you’ll have to invest in a lot of extra data.

Hughesnet offers only one speed for all its plans, but it’s enough to stream movies and TV—at least in theory. When we tested Hughesnet plans first-hand, we found that it couldn’t maintain enough speed to stream most content. The most we could manage were YouTube videos at 480p resolution, which is less than most people expect from their phones.

If the amount of data you use varies considerably from month to month, Hughesnet’s simple, flexible pricing model could save you some money.

Streaming video can use a lot of bandwidth, but it depends heavily on the quality of the picture and the number of devices that are streaming at the same time. Different video services also have different bandwidth recommendations, though they’re usually pretty similar. Watching high definition 4K video on a single device, for example, usually requires about 25 Mbps of download speed, which is technically doable over satellite.

For a more detailed breakdown of speed requirements for different platforms, check out our guide to How Much Speed Do I Need to Stream Video.

One nice thing about video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu is that the software itself is really good at buffering your signal. When you’re watching a movie, your device downloads the data a few seconds ahead of what’s actually playing on the screen. That means if the speed of your connection fluctuates or there’s a brief disruption, your movie keeps playing smoothly off that pre-downloaded data without any pauses.

Naturally, live content can’t do this as well without putting a huge delay between the live content and when it appears on your screen, so you’re more likely to encounter buffering issues watching a Twitch stream or a live newscast than with pre-recorded content.

Streaming video over satellite isn’t an ideal situation. While most satellite plans meet the speed requirements for streaming video, data caps usually pose the bigger problem. Satellite data caps are incredibly low compared to other types of internet. Although a plan with 50 GB of data might seem like a lot, you could easily run through four or five GB of data for one movie night.

If watching a show in the evening is part of your daily routine, a 50 GB data plan might only get you halfway through the month. Throw in a couple of kids that want to watch Bluey on their iPads every day after school and you could find yourself running out of data in a matter of days, which isn’t very practical.

Choose unlimited data

The best choice for anyone who watches a lot of online video is to choose an internet plan that offers unlimited data. Right now, the only satellite service that does this is Starlink , making it the clear choice for rural Netflix fans. Starlink speeds are also high enough that you shouldn’t have any bandwidth problems, even if streaming on multiple devices simultaneously.

Lower your picture quality

Although it’s not the most visually appealing option, lowering your video resolution drastically reduces the amount of data it uses. Even just dropping the quality from 4K UHD to HD can make your data last around five times longer.

If you watch everything in standard definition, you could probably watch video every day and still make it through the whole month on an average data plan. You can change the resolution of videos on a service like Netflix through its settings menu.

This is also the same principle behind how things like  Video Data Saver work. By automatically throttling your speed when you watch a video, it forces lower resolution playback that uses less data.

Get satellite TV

Getting a satellite TV plan like DirecTV in addition to your satellite internet may sound like an expensive solution, but in some situations, it could actually save you money. Unlike satellite internet, satellite TV prices depend primarily on the number of channels you get, not how much data you use or how much time you spend using it. For those who watch video all day, every day, paying for a second satellite service could be cheaper than buying all the extra data  needed every month to support your TV habit.

Of course, satellite TV works a lot differently from a streaming service, and if the channels you want only come in the most expensive packages, it may not be worth it. For some people, however, satellite TV can be a way to watch as much video as you want without worrying about how much data you’re using.

Streaming on satellite FAQ