One hour of streaming TV on one device uses between 23MB and 2.4GB of data. Streaming TV for three hours each night for 31 days you consume 713MB to 74.4GB of data per device.

The amount of data depends on how clear you want the screen resolution to be on the device you’ll be using. The higher the resolution you choose the more data you are consuming. If you’re on a satellite internet plan with a cap on how much fast data you get each month then it pays to be smart about data use.

You can conserve data use by making thoughtful selections in the Quality settings in the streaming platform. YouTube, for example, makes these easy to find. Click the gear icon on the lower right side of the video screen. YouTube automatically plays back at 480p but you can choose lower or higher resolutions at will. Other platforms require you to go into your account to access the settings so you can manually select you desired resolution. Be mindful that some platforms will default to HD levels of streaming to give you a better experience but for those with high-speed data caps each month you can avoid streaming at full tilt bozo by making smart selections with resolution or quality. Pick and choose your shows that can be watched at standard resolution vs. those that you want super-high clarity for viewing.

Here are approximate data guidelines for a few common platforms and these are per device. Amazon Prime Video uses 700MB to 7GB per hour. Netflix uses from 300MB to 7GB per hour. YouTube uses 260MB to 2.7GB per hour. Disney Plus uses 600MB – 7.7GB per hour. Facebook uses 120MB to 1GB per hour. If you rent a movie from iTunes, Google Play or another platform, that platform will set the size of the rented film based on the compression in the video. It will be about 1.5GB per hour for Standard Definition, 2.1GB per hour for HD and 3.5GB per hour for HD.

When you stream most children’s shows, or standard TV shows, you can select 480p (Standard Definition) or even lower for a small screen. The “p” refers to progressive scan. The number 480 refers to horizontal resolution at 60 frames per second. The higher the resolution the more that number increases and the more data you use. This is not a factor if you have unlimited fast-speed data (not unlimited data overall but rather unlimited high-speed data) but satellite internet plans have caps each month on how much high-speed data you get. You can buy more when you need to do so but it might be an unplanned expense. The bigger the screen, the higher resolution you are going to be tempted to select. Big screens often call for HD (720 p) Full HD (1080 p or 1080i) or 4K but if you carefully choose the quality setting for each show you can avoid using more data when it’s not really necessary.