[RedPimpernel]

I'm going on vacation to a farm with no internet. I'd like to be able to watch some Netflix movies streamed to my 3G iPad. But can I watch even 1 movie without going over the 2GB data limit?

[chas_m]

Impossible to say for sure, too many factors involved, but at a guess I'd say certainly no more than two or three.

I think you'd be far, far better off ripping digital copies of movies you own or buy in advance, and then storing them on the iPad for later viewing. Streaming over 3G is a VERY bad way to go -- 2GB isn't that much when we're talking video. It's more than enough for browsing, email and such.

[MacCheetah3]

As mentioned, your results will vary but testing using my iPhone 4 back in September 2010 resulted in an average consumption of about 100MB for every 30 minutes of Netflix video streaming and about 7MB per YouTube video (10 minutes).

It's important to remember that's ONLY Netflix or YouTube consumption. You still have email, web browsing, Push alerts, and many other data consuming apps (weather, etc).

AT&T's Estimated Data Calculator seems to estimate low based on my tests. However, they are estimating video and music in general, without any quality specific mentions.