Netflix Enables Streaming Quality Control To Reign In Mobile Data Usage (hothardware.com) 69
MojoKid writes from a report on HotHardware: Netflix wants to put users in control of their mobile data usage when it comes to its iOS and Android apps. Up until today, Netflix held all the cards and adjusted video quality settings on its end (and how much cellular data was consumed) when users were on a cellular connection. Now, Netflix is opening up user-selectable settings that allow you to sip data (at the expense of video quality of course) or gulp it down if you're one of the few with an unlimited data plan. Making the adjustment is as simple as navigating to App Settings and then selecting Cellular Data Usage. From there, you will be able to select from Automatic (Default), Low, Medium, High, or Unlimited options. If you're on a Wi-Fi connection, these quality settings are disabled altogether.
WE TODD ED (Score:4, Informative)
REIN
REIN IN, like SLOWING DOWN A HORSE - THROTTLING
REIGN is something a king or emperor does.
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Also:
Horde: A large and unruly group of humans. Or orcs. Or orc-human hybrids.
Hoard: A big pile of treasure that a dragon sits on.
This message brought to you by the J.R.R. Tolkien Frequently-Confused-Homophone-Pair Dictionary.
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Hey! Don't loose track of the topic at hand with your silly pedantry!
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Silly pedant mode...ON
Lose. Not loose. In the immortal words of Old Biff "you sounds like an idiot when you say it wrong".
Pedant Mode...OFF.
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
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Whoosh!
Better learn to tow the line.
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REIGN is something a king or emperor does.
Which describes how Netflix handled bandwidth prior to this - they're the king and you get no choice.
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Heh. Reminds me of a headline I saw many years ago:
"Bush to Reign in Federal Spending"
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Well YouTube for the iphone app at least does allow you to change your settings.
but 720p is a lot for a lot of mobile stuff.
Seriously? (Score:1)
"Reign in"? And I'm not even a native English speaker...
Wi-fi Hotspots? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Wi-fi Hotspots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just go to the website and select your preferred data rate in your profile. I've had mine constrained for quite a while now.
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I'd rather do it per device - I want my hard wired Roku to use highest quality, but if I'm (or really, my kids) using a wifi hotspot I'd like to be able to set that device to a lower quality setting, both for cell and wifi.
What I'd also like is a way to tell the OS that a particular wifi connection should be treated like a cellular connection, and have all apps respect that. And I'd like a pony.
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Windows:
http://www.groovypost.com/howt... [groovypost.com]
Mac:
Unfortunately, no built in solution but....
https://www.obdev.at/products/... [obdev.at]
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That's cool, thanks!
When I'm with the family, though, the main problem is iOS/Android. I'm thinking of stuff like Dropbox photo uploads - it would be nice for those to wait for a "real" wifi connection. And lower bitrate YouTube/Netflix.
Re: Wi-fi Hotspots? (Score:2)
For iOS at least you can deny on a per app basis whether it is allowed to use cellular data.
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Right, but I'd like to be able to tell iOS that a particular wifi connection should be treated as cellular data so that those per app restrictions apply when I'm using a MiFi type hotspot. Right now it think iOS treats all wifi connections as unlimited data. I had thought that was the case with Android too, but I just found the "Network Restrictions" menu under Settings -> Data Usage and it seems you can in fact tell newer versions that certain connections are metered.
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You can set up different quality settings for each profile. I have a high quality profile that I use when I want to watch a movie on my TV. But when I'm watching TV shows on my phone or tablet, I use my main profile which is set to the lowest quality, since I can't see the difference anyway. The kids always use the lowest quality setting when watching cartoons on the TV and the quality seems to be good enough.
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That sounds like a great solution, one of these days I'll look into that.
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And each quality setting has its own queue? Doesn't sound ideal.
Mark SSID as metered in Android or Windows (Score:2)
What I'd also like is a way to tell the OS that a particular wifi connection should be treated like a cellular connection
Since Windows 8 and Android 4.something, the user has been able to mark a particular SSID as metered. Under Android 5 "Lollipop", for example, try Settings > Data usage > Network restrictions. Ethernet connections, however, cannot be marked as metered even if their upstream connection is capped, such as satellite, home LTE, or home WiMAX in areas that can't get fiber or DSL. This has already caused people to exceed caps on PCs with an Ethernet connection to a satellite modem.
and have all apps respect that.
I haven't read the Google
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Yeah, how about letting people (who presumably may occasionally know more about their own specific network bandwidth costs) adjust their settings for any situation. I can see creating default profiles for people who want Netflix to take care of it for them, but disabling the ability to go reconfigure/specify what you want for yourself is stupid and seems to be a product of the same mindset which results in menu choices in programs being replaced by some minimal set of graphical buttons.
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You have always had the ability to log into your Netflix account and manage your streaming bandwidth there.
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I'm mobile, so I'll decrease the quality of my devices at home that someone else might be watching...not a great plan.
Re: Wi-fi Hotspots? (Score:2)
Depends on your plan. The standard (HD) plan gets 2 screens simultaneously. There are bigger plans.
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Yup. The 4K plan gets you 4 simultaneous streams.
It's not useless (Score:2)
Quality control of streamed content (Score:5, Funny)
Does it let you watch Downton Abby, but not sitcoms and reality shows?
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Good thing for us Canadians (Score:2)
And our third-world monthly data caps at first-world prices!
Not Necessarily for the Benefit of Users (Score:2)
Netflix is still beholden to the Amazon platform they sit on, regardless of what discounts they get, so cutting storage, bandwidth and other costs becomes very important. The trouble with cloud platforms is that they look very attractive to accountants because they don't see a huge amount of upfront costs, but, over time that catches up with you. When you build your own infrastructu
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It doesn't. GP is probably just a disgruntled ex-employee who used to work in a datacenter that was phased out in favor of Amazon cloud.
That tells you everything you need to know. After a few years, or even a few months depending on the size of the system, you could have bought hardware many times over and had it pay for itself. That's the whole point of building infrastructure. Trust me, I've been there....many years before you most probably.
We're doing the same thing where I work. The former primadonnas are being shown to the door.
The monthly bills will hit home sooner rather than later, as they have done and are doing at many organisations. But hey, look on the bright side. It's natural selection ;-). I also had a good chuckle
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I do not think you are aware how Netflix actually distributes content.
Every reasonably-large ISP is offered a Netflix-cache which is a physical box they provide. The ISP then installs the box in their network, and the Netflix customers in that ISP now get their content from the box. Unless the content is too rare to be in the cache, in which case it flows over the regular network, like before. Now, for many smaller ISP's this is not worth it, since the box itself eats quite a large amount of bandwidth just
Opportunity cost of Netflix box's 4U rack space (Score:2)
The Netflix Open Connect Appliance takes 4U of space [netflix.com] in the ISP's data center, space that a paying colo customer could be leasing. This is why Comcast refused the appliance, as the opportunity cost of not being able to lease the real estate to a colo customer outweighed the cost of poor quality service to its subscribers.
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The Netflix Open Connect Appliance takes 4U of space [netflix.com] in the ISP's data center, space that a paying colo customer could be leasing. This is why Comcast refused the appliance, as the opportunity cost of not being able to lease the real estate to a colo customer outweighed the cost of poor quality service to its subscribers.
Indeed so. The incentive here is all on Netflix's side.
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I do not think you are aware how Netflix actually distributes content.
Yes, I am.........
Every reasonably-large ISP is offered a Netflix-cache which is a physical box they provide. The ISP then installs the box in their network, and the Netflix customers in that ISP now get their content from the box.
Not every ISP can provide local caching for Netflix at all, and that cache still needs to be populated. ISPs also have to have an incentive to do this so it is something Netflix have to subsidise, which for them is worth it to save as much bandwidth into and out of Amazon as possible.
The neat thing is that for participating ISPs, Netflix has no extra expenses when a customer picks a high bandwidth stream, and for the ISP it is great as well because they only have to transport the stream in their own network, which in many cases is close to free.
You're being incredibly optimistic and naive here I'm afraid. This has to be paid for, by Netflix mostly, and bandwidth wherever it is is never free. This is the extreme lengths Netflix has had to go to to sav
Binge On by T-Mobile (Score:2)
Then subscribe to T-Mobile and enable Binge On QOS mode to throttle Netflix down to 1.5 Mbps. While Binge On is enabled, your Netflix streams are limited to standard definition but do not count against your monthly data allowance.
Good option to have - now Amazon's turn! (Score:3)
I still have a grandfathered Verizon unlimited plan, so I suppose I could use the setting to shift to unlimited bandwidth, but I really don't notice the difference in picture quality when I'm on cellular vs. on WiFi at home, so I'll probably leave it as it is.
Now, if only Amazon would remove the restriction that makes it impossible to download shows to your device (not stream, download) over cellular networks. Works just fine over WiFi, but it's impossible over cellular. I get why they have the restriction (someone hits download, and 600MB of wireless data zip by without them actually watching anything, and they get pissed off), but it should be an option that I can turn off (leave the default to "no download over cellular, certainly). It's not a bug or flaw, it's a conscious policy decision.
If I'm traveling, and want to download something on the way to the airport to watch on the plane, the inability to do so is pretty annoying.
Netflix Streaming Question (Score:2)
When I watch, say, old Star Trek episodes(TOS), streamed on Netflix, they look great:
Crystal clear and no blocky pixelation to speak of...
When I watch episodes of a new Netflix created series, such as "House of Cards", it looks terrible.
Blocky pixelation all around, and Kevin Spacey looks like he came out of Minecraft.
I have confirmed this behavior over and over with these two series.
I have friends who also confirm this behavior(especially HoC).
Is t
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I don't have that problem - their originals look spectacular in 4k.
Um, this feature has always been there. (Score:1)
I have had Netflix for years and I have always been able to tell Netflix to manage streaming speed. In fact one reason I use Netflix over Amazon Prime is this feature, since Prime will always stream in the highest quality your connection will support.
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You're on a nerd-discussion site. Most of what we want to talk about are products we can go buy. You may need to lighten up a little.
I sure wish (Score:2)
I sure wish we could keep these setting enabled not only on the phones when using wifi, but also on the client built into our DVD players and the desktop web browser version!
Some of us have metered Internet you know! Its a huge PITA to try and keep track of of NFLX destination IPs so my router can shape the traffic down to a reasonable value, such that I don't burn half of my monthly cap watching to a couple movies.
Others think it's worth moving (Score:2)
I think satellite subscribers are expected to switch to fiber, cable, or DSL. And if these Slashdot users' opinions are to be believed [slashdot.org], subscribers outside the service area of fiber, cable, or DSL are expected to move.
So Netflix calls 2.2 MBit/s "high quality"? (Score:2)