A Question About Streaming Movies And Videos

Discussion in 'Gadgets & Tech Talk' started by Babs Hunt, Jun 20, 2018.

  1. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    When you watch a movie or video on your laptop what happens to the movie or video when it is over with. Does it take storage space up on your computer? And if so how can you delete it so it doesn't end up slowing down your computer?
     
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  2. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    I've never done this but my understanding is that using a flash drive is the best way to save space on laptops and computers.The flash drive should have enough space to accommodate the size/length of the movie.
     
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  3. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    From what I know, a movie or video isn't saved in any way on laptop or desktop. You watch it and that's it.

    Agree with Von, if you want to save anything you watch or do on a computer, use a flash-drive. I have flash-drives for all of our photos and video clips taken with our digital camera. Any CD's we buy, I copy to a blank CD and store the original CD.
     
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  4. Chrissy Cross

    Chrissy Cross Supreme Member
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    I just stream movies, don't download them. The ones I buy are there to stream whenever I want but usually once I watched something I won't watch it again.

    Except if it's been awhile and I have nothing to watch I like rewatching some of Midwives and The Crown...but that's rare.

    Right now I'm paying for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Showtime. Plus my AT&T uverse. Need to get rid of the
    AT&T but I need another option for going to sleep at night.

    Forgot to add, on my iPad not a laptop.
     
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    Last edited: Jun 20, 2018
  5. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    I don't want to save the movie or video. What I'm asking is after you have finished watching these things do they take up storage space on your computer?
     
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  6. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    If you think they are, simple thing to do is clean out your Temp Storage. I do that often.
     
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  7. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    No. You are only streaming the movie. Streaming affects memory usage.

    I will say with other programs going as well can cause interruptions during the movie e.g. freezing. When that happens there is a lack of memory to accommodate running programs.
     
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  8. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    Thanks Von...that makes things a bit clearer. :)
     
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  9. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    As Von and Chrissy pointed out, if you re just streaming a movie (like from Netflix), then it just plays on your laptop and doesn’t save anything. It is similar to watching television, you can watch for hours; but nothing is actually stored on the device.
    However, if you purchase a movie and then download it onto you laptop, then it will be saved there and you can watch it anytime; but it is also taking up space from your memory.
    We have 1-2 movies that we purchased; but otherwise, we just stream anything that we want to watch.
     
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  10. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I do this a lot and I don't believe that the entire movie is saved. In fact, I am nearly certain it is not. I say this because a movie will stop if it encounters a bad spot on the DVD, usually just requiring a cleaning. It wouldn't do this if it had first copied the movie to the hard-drive. Something is saved to the hard-drive however because if I stop halfway through it will often remember where I was.

    Music CDs, on the other hand, give me the option of copying them to my hard-drive or to the cloud. I could probably do that with a DVD as well, but that option is not presented to me as it is with a music CD.
     
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  11. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    I just wanted to know because with my other Hot Spot internet connection I had a hard time watching videos or movies. Most of the time they took forever to load and then they were stopping every few minutes to load some more of it. With my new Hot Spot I just found out I can watch movies and videos without any problem....and I just wanted to make sure they weren't going to be filling up my storage space.
     
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  12. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    You probably just have a better connection right now. Your connection is also affected by how many other people are on it. By that, I don't mean on your wireless account but how many other customers in your area they are serving. If a bunch of people in your area decides to use the same Internet provider, your connection will slow unless they build up their capabilities.
     
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  13. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    One thing I know is different with my new Hot Spot is that I have unlimited 4G. With the old one I had 4G only until I reached it...then it went down to 2G until the start of the next billing cycle.
     
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  14. Dan Kingston

    Dan Kingston Very Well-Known Member
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    Hi Babs,

    When you stream a video online, or even viewing images on a website, the media has to be downloaded to your computer before the browser can play the video or render the image. When you stream a video, the browser downloads chunks of the video into the browser's cache folder. As you watch the video, parts of the video are loaded into memory from the cache in order for the browser to play it.

    The parts loaded into memory are managed by your computer; it gets cleared automatically when it's no longer needed. However the cache folder is used as temporary storage and it doesn't automatically get deleted. This can definitely take up a lot of storage, especially for smaller hard drives. You can empty out the cache folder manually by clicking a button in your browser's settings, or navigating to the cache folder and deleting the files yourself. There's also an option to automatically delete the cache when your browser closes. Let me know if you want more details on how to clear your browser's cache. Hope this helps.
     
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  15. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    What happens with Smart TVs?
     
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