Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

Ah, didn't notice the article from Netflix was in August, only saw the news on AVForums today.

Does explain why there are so many posts about the PQ on Reddit and why news articles about the PQ started appearing from September onwards. Guess those people should probably get their eyes tested or sit further away from their TVs if Netflix say they can reduce bitrate, thus saving costs, whilst improving picture quality. What absolute heroes :cool:
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Ah, didn't notice the article from Netflix was in August, only saw the news on AVForums today.

Does explain why there are so many posts about the PQ on Reddit and why news articles about the PQ started appearing from September onwards.
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Are there? where? not in r/netflix that's for sure. It feels like you're trying to make a mountain out of this. Where were you when they applied the variable encoding to 1080p? Oh that's right, you didnt notice .....
 
I've noticed YT have again blocked auto 4k again and auto sets to 720p which i then have to manually set to 4k. It stopped doing that 2 months ago but it seems to be back, related to second spike?
 
robgmun said:
I've noticed YT have again blocked auto 4k again and auto sets to 720p which i then have to manually set to 4k. It stopped doing that 2 months ago but it seems to be back, related to second spike?
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Could be.

It seems an increasingly large number of those in Europe are being put on lock downs and curfews which means there is likely to be an increase in the data use generally, and streaming specifically, not to mention something like half the UK population is now under increased restrictions.
 
I was wondering what was going on when watching Ratched the other night. Come to think of it we haven't watched anything on Netflix for a couple of months before Ratched.

The bit rate was going up and down like a yoyo, however it was dropping touching 1440p for a second then jumping back up to 2160p on scene switch, at first I thought it was my connection but that was solid. you can physically see the quality change on the switch between resolutions which alerted me to it. It seemed to only get to slightly over ~11Mb/s for 2160p....

Not exactly a big deal though as long as they stop it dropping to 1440p
 
Remember seeing that trailers often had high bitrates, so, going further high bitrates at film start would seems a good marketting strategy.
Are there any analyisis of bitrate across films ?

With the overall lower bitrates and covid impact on cinemas, seems even less incentive to justify decent, genuine, 4k special effects on movies.

If they have now re-encoded some of the series like got/vikings that were used as test cases, for oled near black flashing problems(LG bashing), that would be interesting, is it worth re-watching stuff.
 
Hold on..... So somehow they have managed to cut bit rate by half and the quality is still as good or better.....

BS.

There's a reason bit rate is one of the most important things when it comes to sheer quality, more so when viewing on the best displays there are (especially bigger displays).... There was a noticeable difference when they did this back with the first lockdown on my E7 55.

Post to prove their BS wrong too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/ijaw5u/i_made_screenshot_comparisons_of_netflixs_new/

Given the money they have made since people are being confined to their homes, you would think they could just upgrade their infrastructure to cope with all the new customers or better yet, since they are dropping the quality because they don't want to spend their profits on enhancing the experience then do a price drop on the top tier package to reflect the lesser quality that people will get now but nope lets capitalize on this pandemic even further.

But no, lets believe what netflix tell us.......

Oh well, time to cancel the subscription once again and just go back to the good old

2bjqeEH.gif
 
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Post to prove their BS wrong too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/ijaw5u/i_made_screenshot_comparisons_of_netflixs_new/
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no definitive evidence in that thread, as many comments there, concur, to show subjective drop in quality on netflix videos,
screen captures don't seem damming and they need to capture sequences, temporal data (as commented too)

the importance of good low bit rate noise reduction algorithms in your tv becomes more important ie like sony/panasonic are meritted


The comment about the quality of the netflix content declining too - that is more dissuasive for potential customers - just a stream of derivative/populist output,
I can see why gaming is on the ascendant.

with new IP protection mechanisms (in hardware) do people still manage/bother to pirate netflix data, or, is it, just hdmi capture and lossily re-encode.
 
Im part way through better call Saul season 2 and if I watch it on my phone (S20 plus) there's lots of artefacting in dark area. Don't see it on either my LCD or my oled. All on the same WiFi connection. Is there something I need to change on my phone (I've not tried downloading it to see if it's any different).
 
Nexus18 said:
Hold on..... So somehow they have managed to cut bit rate by half and the quality is still as good or better.....

BS.

There's a reason bit rate is one of the most important things when it comes to sheer quality, more so when viewing on the best displays there are (especially bigger displays).... There was a noticeable difference when they did this back with the first lockdown on my E7 55.

Post to prove their BS wrong too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/ijaw5u/i_made_screenshot_comparisons_of_netflixs_new/

Given the money they have made since people are being confined to their homes, you would think they could just upgrade their infrastructure to cope with all the new customers or better yet, since they are dropping the quality because they don't want to spend their profits on enhancing the experience then do a price drop on the top tier package to reflect the lesser quality that people will get now but nope lets capitalize on this pandemic even further.

But no, lets believe what netflix tell us.......

Oh well, time to cancel the subscription once again and just go back to the good old

2bjqeEH.gif
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Well, it's all been explained. Up till recently, they were using fixed bitrates for 4k/hdr content. This is very wasteful. Now they aren't. So yes, it's quite possible. Think back to when everybody cared about MP3s and the difference in file sizes between CBR and VBR. same thing.
 
theone8181 said:
Im part way through better call Saul season 2 and if I watch it on my phone (S20 plus) there's lots of artefacting in dark area. Don't see it on either my LCD or my oled. All on the same WiFi connection. Is there something I need to change on my phone (I've not tried downloading it to see if it's any different).
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Perhaps it's nature's way of telling you to stop watching stuff on a phone and just stick to using a TV.
 
If you do watch stuff on your phone, can you, verifiably, get the same bitrate feed too, as on a tv ?
you'd need a high bandwidth connection, of course, but they know the device, unless you can spoof it, and, deliver which version(html5) they choose.
 
jpaul said:
If you do watch stuff on your phone, can you, verifiably, get the same bitrate feed too, as on a tv ?
you'd need a high bandwidth connection, of course, but they know the device, unless you can spoof it, and, deliver which version(html5) they choose.
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I can't see any way of checking.:(.
 
yes need a mobile traffic monitor , that gives app specific detail, but, equally, my broadband router cannot measure my roku's diet.
 
I strongly suspect that the app/browser on the mobile will be using a different version of the encode to the desktop/TV versions, IIRC netflix have a bunch of different encoding versions that are used based on current bandwidth and device type.
 
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