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Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

bbc.co.uk

651–660 of 763 posts

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

#651

This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)? You cannot decide by yourself to lower the quality of your services and keep the price same. Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from these type of situations. I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg. "The v…

I read yesterday that someone managed to hack Netflix' data packets and discovered their 4K is not actually 4K either; if that is the case, they're liable for false advertising.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix might have data centers that gets closer, but nothing will ever get as far reaching and close as P2P would. A residential building who are all watching the same movie would only have to download the movie from building internet once. Replicate this system on every level (local network building city country) and you get so much more bandwidth available. Of course there are other considerations and we (humans)…

1) Can a cable ISP even route traffic between residential customers without schlepping out to a POP? 2) Where does the upload bandwidth limitation live? Because if it's in the cable modem itself or the nearest upstream connection, this doesn't help much. There is probably much more capacity between the OpenConnect and the home than the home and its nextdoor neighbor.

> 1) Can a cable ISP even route traffic between residential customers without schlepping out to a POP?

Guess it depends on the ISPs implementation but in my experience, yes, some ISPs let you route traffic between residential customers, granted you've setup your router correctly.

> 2) Where does the upload bandwidth limitation live?

In my experience, the limitation lived further away than the residential building, as we hit our own equipment's limits before we hit any other limits.

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

#653
post #554

This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)? You cannot decide by yourself to lower the quality of your services and keep the price same. Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from these type of situations. I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg. "The v…

During a pandemic which has forced a huge number of people to stay at home and is currently crashing the economy and costing hundreds of lives per day, it could help to be a little more sympathetic to measures like this. They might not be perfect, because everyone is having to react so quickly to what is going on, but we can appreciate that this is not a normal event and the vast majority of companies have never plan…

While in principle I agree that luxuries like Netflix should be secondary to core internet services, at the same time I'm worried about the slippery slope that is net neutrality.

I mean we've had a lot of slippery slopes recently, things like the government Demanding access to location data. I never agreed to share this information with my government. I did not agree to have my ISP or Google or etc to share this data.

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

#654

This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)? You cannot decide by yourself to lower the quality of your services and keep the price same. Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from these type of situations. I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg. "The v…

If this is important to you right now, cancel your membership, right now. Others will happily share the bandwidth you relinquish (says someone who just set the bandwidth limit to "LOW" because my kids are not in school as are hundreds of other households in my area. They couldn't care less about the quality.)

Exactly; vote with your wallet, not comments on HN.

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

#655
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I don't have problem with netflix reducing it. I have problem with netflix not reducing price together. They're essentially painting themselves in glory AT THE PRICE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS.

That also means reducing the wages of employees, people not whinig is the only shimmer of hope we have at keeping the economy the same when we emerge from this. Sure, I can't go to my gym, but if we all cancel now, there won't be a gym when I am allowed to go again. At the same time my income might, at some point, also be affect. But, as it is now it is not (yet), so I'll keep it going. I have to admit I did cancel m…

If your gym won't be able to re-open after this thing is over, it only shows the quality of management of the gym as well as of the government. It should not be your burden to bear and build a buffer for them for their mistakes. Someone higher up pocketed all the profits while things were good and is now not ready to invest that money back into it to keep it afloat and that's THEIR problem. They have the money, let them put it back into the economy.

Cancel your membership and stop giving into the bullshit that people are feeding to you. If you want to help, help people, not corporations.

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

#656

Paying isn't enough to get what you paid for, so... https://github.com/SickChill/SickChill - automatically download TV episodes (about Linux) https://github.com/CouchPotato/CouchPotatoServer - automatically download Movies (about Linux) https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent - torrent client for downloading your Linux tv/movies...

What makes you (not you specifically, you in the general sense) think you're entitled to viewing content without paying for it? I mean if you want to make a point just cancel your subscription.

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

#657

Paying isn't enough to get what you paid for, so... https://github.com/SickChill/SickChill - automatically download TV episodes (about Linux) https://github.com/CouchPotato/CouchPotatoServer - automatically download Movies (about Linux) https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent - torrent client for downloading your Linux tv/movies...

Also the current URL for The Pirate Bay is https://tpb.party

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

#658

Maybe if we had kept using bittorrent for TV distribution we wouldn't have so much global traffic downloading "The Avengers" for the millionth time, you would just download it from the nearest host (also the way the internet worked before HTTPS, there used to be way more local caching of content being downloaded over and over again)

You could think about the opposite way: it's good that Netflix was using so much bandwidth because it encouraged network upgrades. Now, when we need to use this capacity for something else, Netflix can flip a switch and it's available. Excess usage for luxuries like 4k video in good times is a way of preparing for bad times. Ideally we would treat hospital capacity the same way. In good times, everyone gets a private…

The difference being that networks and Netflix servers don't cost a lot of money or take up space when they're idling, and/or they can sell the capacity and switch rapidly when they need it, whereas hospital capacity does.

I mean I'm all for having excess hospital capacity (and excess capacity for a lot of things), but at the same time who is going to pay for it?

This has been the problem before cloud computing; companies had to set up servers and the like for the worst case peak capacity workload, meaning that usually they'd only be operating at 10-20% of capacity.

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

#659

There’s so much that seems wrong about this. 1: home network capacity used to be at peak around 7PM IIRC. There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day. 2: Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively, on the theory that would allow more “important” traffic to get priority, while still allowing people to…

> 3: Allow individual ISPs to ignore agreements and bandwidth limit Netflix traffic from their POPs, if ISPs are having capacity issues.

This goes against net neutrality, and it's a slippery slope. We have fought to keep net neutrality (and in the US that fight was lost iirc).

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

#660
post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will free up critical bandwidth that will enable more work from home and remote teleconferencing. We can’t increase available bandwidth overnight. It is better to suffer slightly decreased internet speed compared to lots of dropped packets if Internet pipes are clogged.

Are people deliberately missing the point? Netflix kicked everyone down a plan tier, but continues to charge at the original plan tier. If you get kicked down, the invoicing should match that.

Actually FTA:

> Out of these two, Netflix says it will cut its streaming bitrates.

They aren't cutting resolution i.e. kicking people down a tier. If you pay for HD, you will get HD... at a reduced quality.

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