Lightbox - select lower quality for capped plans?

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lookout

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#195067 4-Apr-2016 20:32

Hi all,

I am on Vodafone RBI 4g and watch Lightbox through a Chromecast. The picture quality is brilliant. Problem is, it chews through my 80gb cap pretty quickly.

I see there is an older thread on this same exact topic but it didn't seem to be resolved.

Is there a way I can slow the connection for the Chromecast at the router? I have the Huawei B3000.

gzt

17138 posts

Uber Geek

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#1529312 10-Apr-2016 08:08

No I don't think so with that one. Do you have a link for the manual?

lookout

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1530175 11-Apr-2016 19:08

Cheers for offering to help but I've given up. Cancelled Lightbox and joined with Neflix.

gzt

17138 posts

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#1530178 11-Apr-2016 19:10

Netflix have a quality option?

joshhill96

1512 posts

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#1530179 11-Apr-2016 19:12

gzt: Netflix have a quality option?

Yep, in some devices a quick shortcut will bring up the hidden bitrate options, and the settings in Account Settings can toggle HD on/off

lookout

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1530180 11-Apr-2016 19:12

gzt: Netflix have a quality option?

Yeah they do. Lowest quality setting uses around 300mb an hour (Lightbox used around 10x that).

johny99

495 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1530202 11-Apr-2016 20:11

Is there a reason the bit rate can not be lowered on light box?

Jase2985

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#1530233 11-Apr-2016 21:02

johny99: Is there a reason the bit rate can not be lowered on light box?

yep, because they have decided that adaptive bitrate is the way they want to go

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gzt

17138 posts

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#1530265 11-Apr-2016 21:16

The player may well support it.

I looked through the script sometime back and gained an impression the facility might exist.

In the case where the Lightbox service is provided free to Spark customers it would be a benefit to Spark if some happy lightbox customers increased their datacap. Providing a facility to limit lightbox data use could change that. Pure unjustified speculation on my part : ).

My view is that the availability of this feature would provide additional value to Lightbox customers.

mattwnz

20164 posts

Uber Geek

#1533302 15-Apr-2016 00:23

I wonder if there is some plugin for a browser that will let you reduce the bandwidth you are using, or a network tool. But IMO it is a big flaw of Lightbox. I used to have big problems with stuttering over wifi. Even youtube allow you to manually change the quality settings.

gzt

17138 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#1533309 15-Apr-2016 00:36

Actually that is a good point you should be able to achieve that with Chrome throttle in devtools menu. I'll try it out sometime.

Edit: uh that was silly maybe not because mattw indicates it will kill quality but will try anyway.

Athlonite

1828 posts

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#1533324 15-Apr-2016 04:36

Are there no QOS setting you can use to reduce the amount of bandwidth taken by apps thereby reducing the data used by them

darylblake

1162 posts

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#1533342 15-Apr-2016 07:26

As far as I am aware lightbox is automatic. They may add a setting in the future. I don't think they have 4k yet it says the highest quality streams use 9Mbps on their website. I had lightbox for about 4-5 months. Pretty much seen all the shows I wanted to see on it. So I never renewed it. But when I had it yeh I started ripping up some data usage.

Netflix you can choose the 'preferred' quality. And it goes down automatically from there if the connection can't handle it.