Netflix Adds Lower-Quality Streams for Bandwidth-conscious Canadians
Netflix Adds Lower-Quality Streams for Bandwidth-conscious Canadians
Posted 03/29/2011 at 9:40am
| by Pulkit Chandna
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Canadian ISPs are notorious for subjecting their users to atrociously low data caps. Needless to say, some of the more restrictive data plans are unfavorable to bandwidth-intensive activities like watching streaming movies. Mindful of this fact, Netflix has now launched a new video quality management option for its Canadian users, letting them select the video quality that best suits their data budget.
Using the lowest video quality available through this new option, it is now possible to watch 30 hours of streaming content while only spending 9GB of your monthly data cap at around 0.3GB/hour.
“In the past, viewing 30 hours of Netflix could consume as much as 70 GBytes, if it was all in HD, and typically about 30 GBytes,” Netflix announced Monday. “While there is some lessening of picture quality with these new settings, the experience continues to be great.”
If any member wants to change back to higher data usage and video quality, they can do so on the Manage Video Quality page, found under Your Account.”
In between the 0.3GB/hour “Good” setting and the 1.0GB/s “Best” setting, there is also the 0.7GB/hour “Better” video setting.
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aarcane
March 29, 2011 at 2:33pm
I never imagined netflix' streaming quality could get any lower o,.,0
anagramsolver
March 29, 2011 at 1:11pm
This is about ISP's extorting the content providers into paying them. The ISP's were not inventive enough to provide anything but a data pipe to their customers over the last decade. So by having ridiculous caps, the Netflixes, on line gaming services, or any form of streamed or downloaded digital content, content providers get screwed.
Look at AT&T's DSL caps now. The only reason ISP's are capping is to pressure the content providers into paying the ISP ransom money to have users travel the ISP's information highway (aka tubes) to access the content. The content providers already pay mega bucks to the ISP’s and should not have to pay a usage tax for anyone using the streamed or downloaded content.
Gezzer
March 29, 2011 at 10:48pm
Actually up here in the great white north any ADSL I've been able to get for the last 10 years has always been capped.
Even our cable broadband has a cap, but it's a soft cap where you get a "friendly" reminder email that your using too much.
Then again our choices are ADSL from the local Telco or cable, so they have us pretty much over a barrel.
compro01
March 29, 2011 at 5:54pm
They provide plenty, namely TV service and their own video-on-demand services. For much more than netflix, of course.
Since they won't compete on price, service, or features, they'll use whatever dirty tricks they are permitted to.
SenTora
March 29, 2011 at 11:40am
I have this feeling that with AT&T getting ready to do datacapping on DSL, that netflix will look to do that same thing here eventually...
Neufeldt2002
March 29, 2011 at 10:14am
I think I would rather just buy the DVD thanks, that way I get the best picture and no data uasage.
aarcane
March 29, 2011 at 2:33pm
Get the DVDs via Mail from Netflix, and invest $20 USD in a DVD Burner and download the free DVD Decr<Name Censored> from google, and another $20 for dual layer DVDs, and you can get all your netflix and watch them later at your leisure, still with no data usage.
Caboose
March 29, 2011 at 2:50pm
Up here, Netflix only does streaming. We have to use a seperate service (zip.ca) for DVD/Blu-Ray discss
deadsenator
March 29, 2011 at 11:56am
Well, I like buying DVDs on the used market too, but there is no way I would buy a DVD for every show I watch. Do this, see what your monthly costs are and let us know how that goes.
It really depends on the show. If it's a sitcom, low-grade viewing is ok. I watched all the seasons of Trailer Park Boys and Saxondale on my phone at the gym on the low-bandwidth feed and it worked well enough. A movie might be different. Dialogue driven or visual driven matters, no? I'd rather have the DVD of the Matrix or something like that.
Neufeldt2002
March 29, 2011 at 12:40pm
We only buy the DVD's for the movies and TV shows that we like to watch. Everything else, cable does just fine. I still think however that it is just a matter of time and Netflix and any other streaming service will be regulated to the same cost as regular broadcasters.
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