It may not be as easy as streaming with other types of internet, but satellite internet still packs enough punch to let you host a scary movie night featuring the classic, Pet Sematary. Of course, there are a couple of things you’ll want to be aware of if you plan on streaming on satellite internet, namely data caps and latency. Read on to find out how these can affect your satellite internet streaming experience, plus find out which satellite internet provider we recommend for streaming. However, there are some differences in how Viasat and HughesNet approach their data caps. The Liberty plans get 12, 25, or 50 GB of “priority data” each month. Priority data lets you stream at a reasonable 12 Mbps. But if you use up all your priority data for the month, your speeds slow to 1 to 5 Mbps. Viasat’s Unlimited plans technically don’t come with a set amount of monthly data, but instead, you get a data “soft cap” to work with. If you haven’t exceeded your data soft cap, you’ll continue to cruise along those digital highways at 25 to 100 Mbps, depending on which plan you have. Once you exceed that data soft cap, Viasat says it might slow your speeds down to 1 to 5 Mbps during times when there’s a lot of internet traffic. So, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to keep streaming Once Upon a Time at 25 to 100 Mbps. Those speeds make us cringe even more than the, uh, inspired creations featured in Nailed It!. And those speeds certainly aren’t optimal for streaming either. There is one saving grace to HughesNet, though. It gives you an extra 50 GB of data to use at 25 Mbps each month. But you’ll need to sign in to your Netflix during the HughesNet Bonus Zone hours to get it—and those Bonus Zone hours are 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. local time. We hope you’re an early bird. Latency measures how long it takes for data to travel from your device to your internet provider, then on to the streaming service, and back to your device. Because Viasat and HughesNet deliver your connection through satellites sitting thousands of miles above Earth’s orbit, that travel time can take a hot minute. This extreme distance is why high latency is pretty much a given with satellite internet. But high latency mostly affects online activities like gaming, where the time it takes for you to press a button and for that button press to register in the game can mean the difference between your character’s life and death. With video streaming, this kind of responsiveness is less critical, so you shouldn’t be too bothered by high latency. (However, if you plan on live streaming on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitch, you’ll see a lag between your actions on camera and your video feed.) Starlink is another excellent satellite internet choice, but it remains in beta (so far). That means not everyone can install it, so keep that in mind and double-check your address before you commit. We recommend the Viasat Unlimited plans over its Liberty plans for streaming Trolls World Tour because you’ll get more data and faster speeds. Plus, the Unlimited plans won’t automatically slow your download speeds if you end up using too much data in a month. Netflix recommends the following speeds for streaming its latest original shows and fan favorites:
Standard Definition (SD): 3 Mbps High Definition (HD): 5 Mbps Ultra HD/4K: 25 Mbps
So all of Viasat’s internet plans offer enough speed to stream in SD and HD, and its Unlimited plans come with fast enough download speeds for 4K. But heads up: we recommend streaming in SD if you’re on a satellite internet connection. Still, HughesNet may be a better deal if you’re looking to spend less money and don’t need faster speeds or more data. Here are the speeds Hulu recommends for streaming:
Hulu library (SD and HD): 3 Mbps Live streams (SD and HD): 8 Mbps 4K: 16 Mbps
Of course, while HughesNet speeds would technically cut it for HD and 4K streaming, we recommend sticking to SD streaming with satellite internet. No matter how much you stream, we recommend doing it in SD. That’s because streaming in HD or better uses 2.5 to 8 GB of data per hour. That’s not a sustainable amount of data usage if you’re on a satellite internet plan with a low data cap. Higher video quality uses a lot more data, so you’ll gobble up your data cap quicker than a marathon runner gobbles up a protein snack after a run. But we mentioned before and we’ll say it again: how much data you need depends on what you do online. So if you’re working from home while you catch all the 90s vibes watching several episodes of The Simpsons, you’ll need a lot more data each month than someone who watches Back to the Future in SD and sends a few emails. To give you a better idea of how much data you might need each month, here’s how much data a two-hour movie and a 45-minute TV episode need depending on what quality you stream in.
