how much a serial, film or documentary takes up depending on the download quality

Disney+ landed in Spain today. Disney’s on-demand content platform that comes to offer as main assets practically the entire Marvel Universe, ‘Star Wars’, National Geographic and Disney movies, among others.

Bearing in mind that, following Europe’s recommendations to avoid network saturation, Disney+ arrives in Spain limiting streaming qualityIf you are not sure how to use the software, downloading the contents before viewing them is a good solution for reproducing them in maximum quality locally. Therefore, it is appropriate to see how much a chapter, documentary or film takes up in the service, depending on its length, whether it is more or less modern and so on.

How much Disney+ content takes up

Disney+ allows you to choose between three types of download quality: High, medium and standard.

Disney+ comes with quite different contentsAmong which we can distinguish at a first glance documentaries, series chapters and films. You can consult in Xataka the complete catalogue, in which you will see that there are several categories.

In our case, we have distinguished several types of content looking at what’s most abundant in Disney+. How long is a short episode of a series? And a long one? Does a new movie occupy the same space as an old one? Let’s do the content division.

• Short series chapters: First episode of ‘The Simpsons T1
• Short modern series chapters: Third episode of ‘The Simpsons T30
• Long series chapters: First chapter of ‘The Incredible Pol
• Long modern series chapters: Second chapter of ‘The Mandalorian
• Short documentary (about 40 mins): ‘The Climbing Lions
• Long documentary (just over 1h): ‘Growing up in nature
• Film of 1,30h approx.: ‘Finding Nemo
• Film of 1,30h approx modern: ‘Toy Story 4
• Over 2h film: ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
• Modern 2+ hour film: ‘Stars Wars: The Last Jedi

Before analyzing the data it is important to clarify something: Disney+ automatically detects the supported video formats and, after this process, plays the content in one or another quality. This means that there may be variation between the weight of the same content on different mobilesDepending on the formats (HDR10, Dolby Vision, etc) that the phones have. For example, on an iPhone 11 Pro the second chapter of ‘The Mandalorian’ takes up two gigs, while on an iPhone SE it takes up 1 GB.

Similarly, the case of Disney+ is somewhat complex since we found many cartoon series while other films, like ‘Avengers: Endgame’, are made with quite different technologies. The higher the quality of the delivery, the greater the weight, so recent films take up more space than older ones. Another example we have here is that ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ takes up in high quality 5 GB while ‘Stars Wars: Revenge of the Sith’ takes up 3.3 GB.

This is why we have divided the contents into several categories, so that you can get as accurate an idea as possible about how much data a series, film or documentary spends depending on its length and release date. Does a new film weigh much more than one from a few years ago? Let’s see, clarifying earlier that the measurements have been made on a Huawei Mate 20 Pro.

Weight of contents in Disney+ according to download quality

In the case of the short series, as expected, the weight is quite moderate. 20 minutes of a Simpsons episode takes less than 800 megsregardless of whether we’re looking at the first or the last few seasons. At the other extreme, with low quality, the weight decreases to less than 200 megs. Commented figures for the series’ chapters.

If we’re talking about slightly longer series, we also don’t find much difference if the series is more modern. In fact, in this case, a chapter of ‘The Incredible Doctor Pol’ has taken up more than ‘The Mandalorian’, both lasting just over 40 minutes.

With regard to documentaries, which we have not separated by modernity as they are still quite rare and of similar datesThere is a difference in the time it takes for them to begin to exceed the hour’s duration. A short documentary (of about 44 minutes) reaches the jig and a half, while a documentary of 1.30h (approx) reaches 2.6 GB.

At the film level You can really tell when they’re more modernHere is where we have seen the most variation. For example, in the case of ‘Star Wars there’s up to two gigs difference in high quality whether we’re looking at a recent delivery or an older one.

In short, the weight of each content will depend on the quality available for it, its duration and the capacity of your phone to play content on HDR, Dolby Vision and so on. For a device like an iPhone 11 Pro that supports Dolby Vision, we found that the same movie can occupy several more gigs compared to another device without this technology. This is the case of ‘The Lion King’ which, although it occupies about 5 GB, it reaches more than 8 GB in the case of the Apple terminal.

Disney+ is here: try it free for 7 days. After that, 6.99 euros per month or 69.99 euros for the annual subscription.