From the above thread it looks as if piracy might actually be a more bandwidth economical option than streaming services. Spread the load of the bandwidth around a bit more. Download any time other than peak streaming hours to then watch, self-contained, during peak streaming hours.

Plus you can rewatch without downloading again. And use sneakernets for sharing with your friends.

I've always disliked how wasteful streaming is in respect bandwidth consumption. However, the "efficiency be damned, just make it fasterer" attitude towards bandwidth is, if not the biggest, then definitely among the biggest, drivers behind the ever increasing internet throughput.

Thinking about it, it seems like watching habits could make streaming be more or less "efficient" compared to downloading once and storing it locally (depends on how one chooses to calculate efficiency tbh).

People that have things they regularly re-watch are obviously gonna benefit from having a local copy they can access entirely on their own terms.

It hadn't occurred to me until recently, but the way I watch stuff has me going through a pretty large amount of data yet I'm also excessively unlikely I re-watch nearly anything that I've seen in the previous 2 years. Whether something is streamed or stored local, it has to be downloaded the first time it's watched. If it'll take 2 years before I re-watch something, it's a waste of time and money to keep a backlog of multiple disks worth of video

With music it's quite different though, I often have the same albums on rotation and it's great to be able to cache them all locally.

Couldn't agree more. I've stopped paying to stream music entirely and now pay to own FLAC files which I store and use on my PC and phone. Almost like regressing back to having an iPod, and I personally love it.

I never gave up my music files, and never will trust service providers enough to do so.

Huh. I typically watch the same thing over and over repeatedly for like a year or more.

Very wasteful if I did much streaming.