Malaysians watch wayyy more video than the rest of the world. Guess how much...

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According to a TNS study done last year, Malaysians spend TWICE as much time per session on YouTube than the global average – 80 mins versus 40mins. And 65% of that time spent, are on our poor, overworked mobile devices. Keep in mind that video is probably the number one makan-er of your mobile data, with YouTube and Netflix accounting for 52% of all Internet usage!

No wonder all the telcos are raising their mobile data limits. But is that even enough? Let’s take a closer look at how much data 80 mins of mobile video takes.

MAT-MATIK: How much data does 80 mins of YouTube video take up?

There's such a thing as too many cat videos. Imagine each of them sucking up your precious data! Image from occultforum.org — There’s such a thing as too many cat videos. Imagine each of them sucking up your precious data! Image from occultforum.org

Well, the first variable you need to ask is what resolution you’re watching at. For YouTube, it’s about 15MB a minute for 720p, and a whopping 34MB a minute for 1080p! If you’re not sure which one you’re streaming on (most people set to auto), the answer is that YouTube will scale for you depending on the speed of your connection in the area. But let’s say for 80 minutes of 720p YouTube?

80 mins x 15MB = 1.2GB for a 720p video!

WAHLAU. Some plans half gone already! And for 1080p?

80 mins x 34MB (at 1080p) = 2.7GB for a 1080p video!

AMIGAD quota finish in two days yo!

Hmm… What about for Netflix?

According to Netflix themselves, here’s the breakdown.

Low (0.3 GB per hour)
Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)
High (Best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)
Auto (Adjusts automatically to deliver the highest possible quality, based on your current Internet connection speed)

So considering most of us probably watch at High or Ultra if we’re on a 4G connection, an 80 minute session would take anywhere from 4GB to 9GB per session!

Wah GG. How to watch video on mobile then?

Yalor… these figures are not even taking into consideration other media like Twitter, or Facebook which has those evil auto-play videos (which you can turn off btw!). Even with a 5-10GB data plan, your video sessions won’t last very long.

But not if you’re with U Mobile! As long as you’re with Hero P98, i130,Ultimate Device
135 and MB128 plans, you qualify for unlimited Video Onz! This deal is quite nuts la, allowing unlimited streaming 24/7 from ALL their partner video sites, and they recently added Facebook, Netflix and Twitter to their roster.

Actually right, we can’t actually think of any popular video source that ISN’T in partnership with them. Can you? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll be sure the client sees it 😉