I’ve always wondered..
In: Technology
It’s not that streaming inherently takes less it’s more of a choice.
So let’s say the file for a movie is 2gb. When you download it you don’t usually get a choice, you just download the movie which is 2gb.
But for streaming, they usually cater to the fact that bandwidth is limited and large files strain the network/infrastructure so they do all kinds of things to reduce size to make it more efficient.
They’ll usually compress the hell out of it for example. The compression algorithms have gotten really good to be honest so the average person with the average tv setup can’t see the difference.
But that’s not automatic. Streaming could be just a straight stream of the 2gb file. But they usually choose to do things to the stream to make it more efficient.
AppleTV+ & iTunes for example chooses to not do much compression so streaming a movie from them is much larger than streaming from Netflix or YouTube.
It’s a choice.
Streaming means that the video is played as the data is received, rather than loading the entire file and then playing it back.
Streaming only works properly if there is sufficient bandwidth – if it takes 10 seconds to download 8 seconds worth of video, the playback will have to keep pausing to wait for more data.
Therefore, it’s possible that if a site offers the option of streaming or downloading, the download may be in a higher quality (and therefore require more bandwidth to download) than the file that is streamed since it doesn’t have to be played back in real time. But if the data that is sent is the same, it doesn’t take less bandwidth to stream.
When you stream, you ask for the video only as fast as is needed to watch. As long as your internet connection can handle one minute of video per minute, you are fine.
When you download, you ask for the whole video to be downloaded as fast as possible maxing out the bandwidth you are capable of downloading from that server.
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