Re:Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide
by maxerickson on Sunday March 24, 2019 @04:50AM
(#19475228)
Most people don't even set the right aspect ratio on content. They don't care about quality.
I've seen people watch warped video because they, for some reason, prefer it to bars on the screen.
Re:Streaming video has surpassed cable subscriptions worldwide
by user5994461 on Saturday March 23, 2019 @09:29PM
(#19473501)
It's well known that netflix is serving low quality bitrate. What they sell as HD is approaching the 480p from youtube from years ago.
It's marketing bullshit and cost savings, slapping the word HD on everything to lure the customers. Cut the bitrate to save on bandwidth costs.
Many homes don't have the 8+ Mbps required to stream high quality videos, they couldn't get HD even if they wanted to.
And this is only for the titles Netflix offers in HD: there are many, probably due to licensing issues, which are offered only in SD resolution (which can be confirmed during playback vie the web player debugger). Netflix originals, while seemingly having the most consistent quality, still suffer from poor encoding issues I've noticed, which makes me think most of all that this is aggressive bandwidth management if even their own titles aren't given a proper encoding treatment.
And then for 4k playback on PC, it's required you have not only a compatible browser or app (4k playback in Firefox will not work), but also a recent CPU that supports hardware DRM - just awful. The future of streaming is bleak if you ask me, albeit convenient for the average consumer. And I guess that's the real demographic.