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Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#61

Post by Qasaur »

sergiotapia wrote: post #38

Makes you think, how much further we could stretch things if we were all using the Nims/C/C++ of the world instead of the Ruby's. Please don't immediately flame, I'm just saying objectively, we could stretch hardware out much further. What do you guys think about this?

I strongly subscribe to this view. Opinions like this get dismissed by the usual premature optimisation argument and that engineer-time is expensive, but I think that if we built our stacks with performance and efficiency in mind a significant chunk of operating and indeed development costs would be eliminated from corporate expenditures and would outweigh the potential initial development costs (which I don't think is that much of an issue, especially when you have competent and skilled engineers building said software).

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#62

Post by _jal »

schnable wrote: post #9

Interesting counterpoint to the "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope. Unless of course we are under strain here in the US as well....

'Better' can mean multiple things.

I'm pretty sure you'd agree that paying 1/3rd of what you pay now for the same bandwidth is 'better'.

Is there sufficient idle capacity to handle an nearly-overnight transition to whatever the load is now? I don't know, but suspect most ISPs are going to keep similar capacity buffers - nobody sells end consumers non-oversubscribed pipes.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#63

Post by cortesoft »

whoo wrote: post #4
eganist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it's effective immediately, so if you don't like it, cut your plan. No one's on contract.

you pay a month in advance

Well, I hate to tell you the devastating news... you might have to eat the $3 this month.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#65

Post by notJim »

jcims wrote: post #40
jbarberu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving from Sweden to the US (Florida) I can't say I've noticed much of a difference in connectivity. 100, 200, 300 & 1000MBps is readily available in both places but usually around at 3x the price in the US. Rural America seems to be an entirely different story.

15M down / 768k up checking in from rural america. I have to stop my camera on video conferences if i want to talk.

My parents have been trying to get high speed internet for years. They're in a semi-rural, but suburbanizing area. They are surrounded by houses that have cable, but their house is older so it doesn't have it.

They had microwave for a while, but it didn't work in bad weather, and then the trees got too tall. They've finally resorted to paying the cable company thousands of dollars to bring cable to their house. It's such a ridiculous opaque process though that my mom basically has to stalk cable vans in her area and give the tech an earful to get status updates. The good techs know how shitty the process is, and one even gave her his personal phone number. However, it's not his department, so his ability to make things happen is limited.

She made the payment back in November, they got permits in January, and she hasn't heard from them since. I asked about how to get this done on DSLReports a while back, and the answer was to just keep calling them over and over and over, because every now and then you'd find someone with a clue.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#66

Post by Skunkleton »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #51
Hamuko wrote: post #24

Is this for the entirety of Europe? Because I imagine we're not having any issues with this in Finland.

It's a made up problem. In Germany, journalists asked the network providers and they said everything is fine. Such a ridiculous and pointless thing to do by the EU. Especially since all the apps drop the quality automatically anyway if the connection is slow.

I think the point is to protect things like remote desktop, zoom, etc from being pushed out by netflix traffic.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#67

Post by rsynnott »

monkpit wrote: post #25
rsynnott wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US response has so far been fairly muted, with a few notable local exceptions. There are a lot more people stuck at home in Europe. In practice, though, at least in Ireland there's been little obvious problem, though you can definitely see an increase: https://www.inex.ie/ixp/statistics/ixp

Does anyone know if something like this graph exists for the US? I tried googling for one but I’m not sure of the right search terms to use.

It's a neutral exchange. Note that it doesn't give the whole story; really big players like Netflix may have hardware directly in some of the ISPs and bypass the exchange completely.

The US doesn't have many significant neutral exchanges, but here's one: https://www.seattleix.net/statistics/

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#68

Post by iptrans »

quotemstr wrote: post #35

This sucks. If bandwidth were metered, the market would ration is appropriately. Generally speaking, anything "free" or "unlimited" gets misallocated. When you put a price on something, it gets better.

What’s the point of rationing something that costs a hundredth of a cent per GB?

You get 10TB of bandwidth for a dollar. Once average usage per subscriber goes over that, then we can talk.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#69

Post by zbrozek »

jbarberu wrote: post #34
ketzu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the trope "broadband is better somewhere else" for most places? Anecdotally, most people I know complain about the connection where they live.

Moving from Sweden to the US (Florida) I can't say I've noticed much of a difference in connectivity. 100, 200, 300 & 1000MBps is readily available in both places but usually around at 3x the price in the US. Rural America seems to be an entirely different story.

Silicon Valley here. My options are 20/1 DSL or cell. I chose cell.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#70

Post by goldenchrome »

rosybox wrote: post #50
dogma1138 wrote: post #2

Does it mean they’ll pay me back for the 4K package?

You know, right now is not a time to be thinking about your ability to get the luxury service and goods you're used to. It's about us all staying alive and keeping each other alive and making it through this. Maybe you have to do with a little bit less than you're used to, maybe you don't think it's fair because you've paid $5 extra for your extra stream quality. None of us think what's happening is fair, but we have…

Please don't be unnecessarily condescending on this forum. They're asking a simple question.
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