Here’s How Many Netflix Shows You Can Stream Before Comcast Raises Your Bill

Xfinity Internet subscribers living in Miami, Fla., Little Rock, Ark., or any other city on this list are already well aware of Comcast’s slow-rolling, evil plot to try to limit our Netflixing. The details of the company’s Data Usage Plan Trial – which all of those customers are already part of – were explaained in a piece by Yahoo Tech’s Rob Pegoraro last year, but the short/skinny is that 300 GB of Internet data are allotted to households each month; if you exceed your limit, you’ll have to fork over another $10 for every 50 GB of data.

Sucks for those customers, right? Some day soon it may also suck for you. Comcast’s justification for trying to slime its way out of providing unlimited data to its customers was recently revealed in a company memo: “e-mail [users] shouldn’t pay the same as subscribers … [who] binge-watch Web videos.” We don’t see any reason why Comcast won’t eventually spread this program to all of its customers, which would open the door for competitors to do the same.

So how much Netflix can you fit in under a 300 GB cap? At full HD quality (1080p), you can stream roughly 160 30-minute TV show episodes (commercials removed, of course) or about 29.5 movies (based on one calculation that puts today’s average movie length at 130 minutes). Any way you slice it, we’re talking at least 64 hours of Netflix streaming – and probably actually more, because Netflix will often bump HD video streams between 720p and 1080p, as bandwidth allows.

To break all that down into current content on Netflix, we’ve created some potential playlists that you could squeeze into a Comcast billing cycle without getting hit with any data overage charges. They are:

image
  • All 10 episodes of Master of None, PLUS every LEGO cartoon (85 episodes), plus all 21 female standup comedy specials on Netflix, or …

image
  • Just over half of the entire The West Wing series (89 of its 156 episodes), or …

image
  • Three episodes short of the entire American version of The Office (198 of its 201 episodes), or …

image
  • Every film on Netflix starring one of these stars: Matt Damon (4), George Clooney (7), Leonardo DiCaprio (4), Denzel Washington (2), Tom Hanks (4), Brad Pitt (5), Will Smith (3), Christian Bale (4), or Bradley Cooper (3), or …

image
  • Every episode of every Ken Burns documentary series on Netflix (38 episodes), or …

image
  • Every episode or film on Netflix with the word “Nazi” or “Hitler” in its title (49 pieces of content), or …

image
  • With enough streaming hours left to fit in all the current episodes of political thriller House of Cards (39 episodes), you could watch every spinoff from the Disney film Air Bud that Netflix carries (12 movies), including Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, Air Bud: Spikes Back, several Air Buddies movies, and both Santa Paws and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups, or …

image
  • You could watch Mitt, the original Netflix documentary about former Massachusetts governor and two-time presidential candidate Mitt Romney, 42 times.

Email me at danbean@yahoo-inc.com. Follow me on Twitter at danielwbean.

And for all the hottest tech news and gadget reviews, follow Yahoo Tech on Facebook!