As of April 1, 2020, changes to nbn® Sky Muster® Plus services announced by the nbn® came into effect, meaning several previously ‘metered’ activities are now ‘unmetered.’
(As in, not count towards your monthly data allowance)
This is great news for those working-from-home, home-schooling the kids, playing online games or trying to run a business. But for those families just trying to stream videos to entertain the family, these changes offer little relief: data used to watch streaming services is still counted towards the monthly metered nbn® Sky Muster® Plus data allowance.
While watching embedded video on social media is unmetered in the new changes, meaning services like Instagram Live and watching videos on Facebook do not count towards your monthly metered data allowance, video streaming services like Netflix®, YouTube®, ABC iView®, Stan®, Foxtel Go®, Kayo Sports®, Disney+® and Amazon Prime Video® still count towards customers’ monthly metered data allowance.
You can read our blog post on the Sky Muster® Plus April 2020 changes here.
Considering that one movie can use more than 1GB in data, even when restricted to SD quality, nbn® Sky Muster® Plus customers still find themselves squeezing as many episodes of their favourite shows into their limited metered data allowance.
Since nbn® Sky Muster® Plus users have an equally sized allowance of Off Peak Data in addition to Peak Data, for use overnight between 1 am and 7 am local time, any downloads completed during this time count towards their Off Peak data use instead of their Peak data use.
It is for this reason that PlayOn Cloud is such a powerful tool.
PlayOn Cloud lets nbn® Sky Muster® Plus customers use their Off Peak data to download videos while they sleep.
Once downloaded, the videos can be watched, and re-watched, again-and-again, without using any data!
The file can be transferred to other devices and watched on TVs or in the car, which makes it a great tool for entertaining children with no need for an internet connection.
Kids can watch their favourite shows over-and-over again (as kids tend to like to do with videos they like) and every time they re-watch it, you’re not using any more precious metered data.
This gives Australians the ability to record and download videos from Netflix Australia as well as YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
Recently PlayOn Cloud have introduced their first Australian specific channel with the introduction of ABC iView (for Australian customers only).
Standard pricing plans are available on the PlayOn.TV Australia website.
nbn® Sky Muster® Plus Peak Data time is 7am – 1am, Off-Peak data time is 1am – 7am (local time). Metered downloads and uploads count towards data usage. Metered usage will be shaped to speeds of 512/256kbps in your Peak time and 2048/512kbps in your Off-Peak time once you exceed your monthly data allowance. Certain unmetered activities may be shaped to a maximum of 256Kbps between 4pm – 11pm (local time) from time to time at nbn’s discretion.
Speeds may be affected by various factors including environmental, equipment (hardware and software), time of use and the number of devices simultaneously using your service. We will be able to assist you with measuring your speeds once the service has been connected at your address.
More information on Activ8me nbn® Sky Muster® Plus including FAQs is available here.