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Guide

Use less data streaming your own media

Streaming your own library away from home uses your mobile allowance and your home upload. Here's what actually makes a difference, from small tweaks to the biggest saving.

The quick wins

  • Download for offline viewing on Wi-Fi before you travel
  • Pick a lower quality on mobile data when you don't need full HD
  • Turn off autoplay of the next episode

The big one: a more efficient server

The server decides how many bytes each minute of film costs. In our live tests Silux Media used 44–62% less data than Plex, Jellyfin and Emby at the same picture quality — about 1.0 GB per HD hour instead of 2.5–2.7 GB. That saving applies to every film, on every device, automatically.

How we measured it

Measured on live Plex, Jellyfin and Emby servers with 8 film and TV test clips. Silux Media had to match or beat each server's picture quality (Netflix VMAF, every frame) before we counted every byte sent — video, audio and container.

Questions

What uses the most data when streaming?

The video. The codec and how cleverly it's encoded matter far more than anything else — which is why Silux Media uses AV1/HEVC and quality-targeted encoding.