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Question

Streaming vs Downloading

Jun 5, 2013 12:04PM PDT

In the context of downloading or streaming a television program onto a pc, does streaming use more or less mbs? Or is there no difference? Also, does picture quality differ between the two?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: Streaming vs Downloading
Jun 5, 2013 4:47PM PDT

If you download the video that you would normally stream directly from an online video web site (like Youtube), then there's no difference in quality or download bandwidth used. Videos from many online video sites are limited in their resolution so they are not typically not HD 1080p quality. So if you download a HD 1080p video from the internet (or rip it from a DVD or Blu-ray) and played this HD video, then there's certainly a difference in picture and sound quality. That's what I do. I found online video sites to have poor quality videos for streaming to my nice HD TVs Happy

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Answer
Big difference;
Jun 6, 2013 1:11AM PDT

You have 2 different methods of delivery. For all intends and purpose, streaming is now so what you see is what you are getting...and if the internet is in a traffic jam, you will see the video in bits and pieces (not continuous). But if the video can be downloaded and saved to the harddrive...then watch it all at once then you will see a smooth piece of video.

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Answer
RE:Streaming vs Downloading
Jun 29, 2013 4:16PM PDT

It is the same thing whether to download or stream the video, but i suggest to download it as in the peak hours streaming is a bit slow. there is no difference is size of data usage and for the picture quality, for HD videos it is better to download the video as picture and sound quality of pc is good than that of video sites.