… because the streaming market is growing relentlessly, with annual revenue growth of more than 10%! We can’t change that, but we’ve collected 3 simple levers to help us get a better grip on our individual “streaming”.

The first small but effective lever to a lower streaming footprint can be found in the settings in our streaming app. By default, the apps of major providers like Amazon Prime, Netflix or AppleTV+ are preset to automatically play the next episode of a series or various trailers for movie recommendations when the end of a series episode or movie is reached. Sure, it’s their business model to keep us hooked (and the episodes of course end with any appropriately attractive cliff hangers…).
The problem is that the respective program so often just keeps on running – even though maybe no one is watching anymore, because it’s so nice to fall asleep on the couch.

Of course, it is similar with music streaming services: Once the end of a playlist or an album is reached, it either starts again from the beginning or similar tracks continue to be played. With podcasts, too, it’s often just episode after episode, even though listeners may have long since dozed off.

So to make our personal streaming experience a little greener, we can disable the autoplay function (on most streaming providers) in the settings. Sometimes the corresponding option is very easy to find – with some providers, such as AppleTV+, you unfortunately search for it in vain.

Lever #2 is image resolution; there is considerable potential for savings here.
The higher the resolution of a movie or series, the more data is consumed during playback. The differences in data consumption are significant. At the same time, the difference in quality between higher and lower resolution is hardly noticeable, especially on mobile devices with small screens. So it makes sense to ask yourself before you press play: do we really need to watch this movie or show in 4K, or is HD or SD enough for us?

For Netflix and Amazon Prime, you can easily adjust the image quality in the general settings – with the highest possible image quality by default. YouTube also automatically defaults to the highest possible screen resolution in both the browser and the app. Unfortunately, this also means that a video will automatically play in 4K if the external conditions are right. In the YouTube app on smartphones and tablets, you can generally adjust the image quality to some degree, at least in the settings. In the browser and TV app, you can only set the image quality directly for the selected video, so you have to set it for each video. Who does that all the time?

The third lever we have is our (professional or personal) video calls.
If you work at a distance, as we do, or in general in all “long distance” relationships, for example with distant family members, today’s possibilities to meet in video calls are great. We used to call this “rich media” – or also: “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Of course, from this perspective, it makes little sense to turn off video when you have a video call with grandparents who live far away. But even here, turning off the effects and filters that are supposed to enhance our appearance or blur the background can help save data and thus energy, since these little gimmicks are unfortunately very data-intensive.

There are even more levers to be found in everyday professional life. We can identify occasions when it makes sense to turn off the camera altogether. Since 2015, we’ve been working 100% remote, with video calls replacing physical meetings in our daily professional lives. And yet, at Vast Forward, as part of our VAST GREEN initiative, we’ve established internal guidelines at Vast Forward as part of our VAST GREEN initiative: cameras stay on during more personal check-ins and check-outs, and also when we give talks so we can see the “audience” – but cameras are turned off, for example, when we go through project lists together and everyone is looking at a shared screen. Other little tips besides “audio only mode” are to reduce the image resolution again, or to turn on data compression, which is adjustable in some video applications.

The point for us is to start small, perhaps by first becoming aware of the opportunities to reduce our data footprint. Even if the levers mentioned above do not have a huge effect on their own – the change towards more sustainability starts with ourselves.

sources:

Nachhaltigkeit von Streaming by bitkom.org
Streaming Trends 2023 by sueddeutsche.de
Video conferencing statistics by techjury.net
Video-Streaming SVOD weltweit by statista.com
Video-Streaming und CO2 | Die wichtigsten Fakten by bitkom.org
Digitales Lagerfeuer | Video-Streaming by bitkom.org
Blick auf das Streaming-Verhalten der Deutschen by marktforschung.de
Virtuelle Weihnachten | Streaming durch die Welt by videoaktiv.de
Frankenstream by arte.tv