Streaming Online vs Downloading Video Quality?

Old setup: Quest 2 + XBVR + Laptop

New setup: Quest 3 + SLR membership

I’m streaming on SLR but I don’t really notice any big changes in video quality. :confused:

Is streaming on SLR lowering the quality of my videos? ( I set it to the max 4000p and I have very strong internet).

Any thoughts?

No streaming video will be as high quality as well-encoded downloaded video. It costs money to stream data, and the better the video quality, the more data it requires. So streaming services will reduce the quality as much as they can to save costs.

Quite apart from that, when you sign up to a service that streams your content to you, they are tracking what you watch, and no matter what they promise, it’s only a matter of time before that information gets sold or stolen.

Storage is pretty cheap, so you can amass a large collection of content to watch offline at your leisure, without any prying eyes knowing what you watch or when. At worst, your source for the content will know you downloaded it, but nothing beyond that.

The quality will almost always be better, too, and you won’t be held back by any interruptions in internet connectivity, either on your end or the streaming service’s end.

1 Like

always download. the vid may not be there tomorrow

1 Like

I prefer streaming on SLR (but I do download what I consider the best vids and scripts just in case they get dropped later). The reason I prefer streaming is due to the quick chapter selection and heatmap.

Visual quality is subjective, some streaming videos look much better than other downloads boasting the same resolution, and vice versa. That’s because you have “good-enough” editors and equipment and GREAT editors and equipment. So one 8K vid does not equal every other 8K video when it comes to visual quality.

Then there are the individual headset’s limitations and/or quality issues.

For me, streaming is just easier. And with the quest’s limited storage, just a better option for most viewing imo.

To each their own, but for the majority of content, I like to stream.

2 Likes