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Guide

Built for slow internet

If your films buffer whenever you're away from home, the problem usually isn't your phone — it's the upload speed at home and a media server designed for fibre.

Where the bottleneck is

A home connection advertised as 50 Mbps often uploads at 5–10 Mbps, and in many parts of the world much less. Everything you watch remotely has to squeeze through that upload — shared with everyone else using the internet at home.

What we measured

We streamed the same films through live Plex, Jellyfin and Emby servers and matched their picture quality frame by frame. At their popular 8 Mbps 1080p setting they sent 5.5–6 Mbps; Silux Media matched the picture at about 2.3 Mbps. At every lower setting we used 44–62% less data.

How Silux Media keeps playing

  • Six quality levels from 240p (~0.2 Mbps) to 1080p, chosen every 3 seconds
  • AV1 and HEVC video with Opus audio — far smaller than the H.264 + AAC most servers send
  • A hard ceiling: set a data-saver cap and the stream never exceeds it
  • Direct play when a file is already efficient, so nothing is wasted

Questions

What's the minimum speed?

Playback continues down to roughly 0.2–0.3 Mbps at reduced resolution. For HD, about 0.7 Mbps (720p) or 2.3 Mbps (1080p).

Will a faster router help?

Rarely — the limit is usually your home upload or the remote network. Lowering the data each film needs is what helps.