Netflix is actually probably the most common source of 4k home video for most people. Nearly all of the Netflix original content is 4k, increasingly in Dolby Vision. Unfortunately (and bizarrely, to me), you do have to buy the most expensive monthly plan to have access to the 4k content. I don't understand why they would choose to make video quality the main object of price discrimination (it seems like associating Netflix with great video quality would be extremely advantageous to them), but hey, it worked for them to get the extra bucks from me.

While it is available in 4K, even if you are paying for access to 4K you are not necessarily getting the stream in 4K.

Do you mean if you don't have a 4K TV and streaming device? Or if your bandwidth isn't enough? I'm not sure how they downsample their Dolby Vision streams, since my TV definitely switched over into Dolby Vision. I suppose the Netflix app may be able to stream lower resolution versions still with the Dolby Vision metadata.

I wonder at that - you can clearly see the difference with an HDR and Dolby Vision image in a way that you can't "downsample", so, do they/can they downsample the HDR image to hit 1080p?

People are mostly concerned about content rather than picture quality. Netflix can deliver 720p and people will pay for it, some people will pay for 4K because of the marketing but don't actually notice that they're getting 720p, and only a small group of people left over actually care enough.

Just like how TVs come with default settings that mangle the picture quite a lot, and only some people will fix them.

Oh, are you suggesting that they're just straight up lying? They would need to not just trick me into thinking I'm seeing HDR (which is probably doable), but also trick my TV into thinking it's playing Dolby Vision, and also actually use significantly more bandwidth than a 720p stream would (I've checked at my router).

I'm sure all those things are possible, but it's also pretty likely that they're actually producing and distributing content in 4K and Dolby Vision.

I think you may be responding to something that I didn't write, because I absolutely never suggested that NetFlix is lying or tricking you.

It's just a matter of fact that, for various (many) reasons, people will get 720p streams. Some of these people are paying $3/month for "Premium" with "Ultra HD" and simply do not notice that they are not getting 4K streams. NetFlix would probably rather keep the $3/month, the alternative would be to educate their users about why they are are not getting 4K (can your TV handle it? can your playback device handle it? are they connected correctly? are they configured correctly? do you have sufficient bandwidth? are there problems with your ISP? does your device have the right DRM?) and this is both time-consuming and likely to create a bit of a support nightmare.

Sorry, I misinterpreted. I was thinking from the perspective of people with working 4K setups who are seeking 4K content.

Yeah, I can't see a way to fake Dolby Vision - it's pretty obvious when you're getting the extra dynamic range from the image - I'm surprised by how much more apparent it is than 4k. I can see resolution fakery, but that's why I asked if they thought it was possible to scale down the 4k Dolby Vision to 1080p Dolby Vision

I mean, you can definitely fake Dolby Vision. The Apple TV 4K has an option to always output Dolby Vision, and they do their own tone mapping to output normal HDR or SDR content in Dolby Vision. I don't use this feature, and it had pretty terrible reviews at launch (although I heard they have improved it).

But yeah, I think the actual presence of additional dynamic range is pretty noticeable for most well-produced content.

Netflix could fake Dolby Vision by dumping MORE data in than was in the original stream - that seems like a wasteful way to cut corners.

I understand that. I was just wondering if the 4k streams (the ones that say 4k|Dolby Vision) are being converted down. I'd guess no.

> I don't understand why they would choose to make video quality the main object of price discrimination

I think this is how perfect society should work when marginal cost is zero.

Netflix cannot directly charge proportionally to your income.

But the cost of your TV set is somewhat proportional to your income.

If you have 4K TV then you are rich, and you can afford to pay more. To allow poor people who cannot even buy FullHD TV to pay less.

So everyone can watch movies, poor folks can afford it, and rich people won't mind the price.

In another word, it would be worse (from a society point of view), if the price was constant, but only rich people could use Netflix.

(BTW this is how people pay for government services with taxes: rich people pay more money (even with flat tax rate) but get the same service).

Doesn't 4k content both cost them more to deliver and generally go to a demo that is more price insensitive? Seems like an obvious play.

No, most of the money Netflix spends on buying content, servers and network cables are cheap.

I've just googled: Netflix yearly revenue is 16B and Netflix spent 12B on content.

Well, if I could offer content (some of which was unique) to a self-selected audience that has very low price sensitivity, I would absolutely put it at a higher price point. Seems like a no-brainer.

Sony sells TVs. Getting consumers more familiar with the 'next' format helps them down the road. Also bigger is always better, unless it's fractional.