I don't know if this was viable at the time, but nowadays I expect you could use an OpenWRT router to do per-domain/mac traffic shaping on the device displaying

I don't know if this was viable at the time, but nowadays I expect you could use an OpenWRT router to do per-domain/mac traffic shaping on the device displaying the cartoons. That would force it down to 480p (or whatever) and reduce your overall usage. Another option that might not have been available at the time would be taking the Netflix device to a different connection (work, the library, whatever) and then pre-downloading a bunch of the cartoons for offline viewing.