Netflix cut streaming quality in Europe

[porina]

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Netflix will reduce the streaming quality of its service in Europe for the next 30 days.

The move is aimed at reducing the strain on internet service providers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51968302

 

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The European Commission  is putting pressure on Netflix  and other streaming platforms to switch to standard definition during periods of peak demand as the coronavirus crisis puts unprecedented load on Internet infrastructure.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/19/keep-calm-and-switch-to-sd/

 

This makes you think, just how good or bad are the net connections out there? I don't mean us end users complaining about paying too much to get too little, but the system infrastructure as a whole. Is it bad enough that the EC needs to ask content providers to cut back on the data? Wouldn't ISPs already be managing this anyway? It certainly is an interesting time right now. 

 

I can only say that so far, as I'm working from home in the UK, I've not experienced any noticeable changes in net performance at any part of the day. For business or pleasure.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, porina said:

This makes you think, just how good or bad are the net connections out there?

i live in the netherlands in a small village about 20km ( or 2 other towns) away from the nearest highway, so pretty much in the middle of nowhere and i can get a 500/500 fibre connection for a relatively speaking low amount of money. 

[porina]

1 minute ago, Twilight said:

i live in the netherlands in a small village about 20km ( or 2 other towns) away from the nearest highway, so pretty much in the middle of nowhere and i can get a 500/500 fibre connection for a relatively speaking low amount of money. 

Wish I could get that here. Can I ask how much that costs?

 

As mentioned in my post, I wasn't thinking so much about the user connections, as the implications were that the wider infrastructure was under strain, perhaps at peak periods only. If that is not the case, then cutting data wont actually make much difference.

[wANKER]

I'm curious if this 'concern' has came from anyone who actually knows anything. Other than Netflix, who are probably shitting themselves that their own infrastructure isn't up to scratch.

Or if it's another 'what if' panic from people who know fuck all. 

 

If they can cope with Christmas, they can cope with this. 

 

 

 

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Wish I could get that here. Can I ask how much that costs?

500/500 on my current ISP will cost €65,95 per month

[SansVarnic]

I ask, does steaming really need to at 4k? No. I have a UHD capable TV but HD looks just fine to me.

 

Most people dont have access to anything but DSL speeds so this move makes sense.

[GDRRiley]

maybe what an idea, ISPs should request more open connect boxes.

[porina]

10 minutes ago, yaboistar said:

I am a typical UK broadband user - my service is Fibre to the cabinet and then ADSL broadband via DSLAM and copper pair for the last 50 yards to my home. Speeds are about 46d 7u for me. This is not the ideal speed i'd get as the copper pair i'm on has about +7v leakage to earth on it which will be introducing noise and reducing the bandwidth the broadband can operate on. I'm not pulling those figures out of my ass, i work as a field tech for my ISP and i have systems to measure this shit.

Interesting stuff. If you had a "good" line, what could you get? Is it within your responsibility to fix it or does it lie elsewhere?

 

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Some lines in the UK are still straight ADSL although these have almost all been upgraded to HDSL or VDSL now. Fibre to the premises is not widely available here and commonly the fastest speeds are through Virgin Media with Co-Ax into your premises.

Yup, on VM (since NTL days) and currently on their 360/36-ish service. Would like a bit more upload though. Hate the way they run so asymmetric, worse than DSL typically.

 

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There's some insight for you all.

Any insight on infrastructure capacity? I wonder if that's where these measures were more targeted at. In other words, where's the bottleneck in the internet?

Edit: just saw your later reply covering this.

 

10 minutes ago, wANKER said:

I'm curious if this 'concern' has came from anyone who actually knows anything. Other than Netflix, who are probably shitting themselves that their own infrastructure isn't up to scratch.

Or if it's another 'what if' panic from people who know fuck all. 

That's a more straight way of asking the question I tried to. Who decided to do what, when? Will other major streaming operators follow? Or is Netflix so big they themselves will make the biggest difference?

 

7 minutes ago, Twilight said:

500/500 on my current ISP will cost €65,95 per month

Nice. That's a bit less than I'm paying for 360/36, but mine is a bundle and I have to have a phone line and TV package I don't use.

 

6 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

I ask, does steaming really need to at 4k? No. I have a UHD capable TV but HD looks just fine to me.

It was a long time ago, Linus did make a point that viewing YouTube on 4k setting even on a 1080p display looked better from the extra bitrate. I don't know how many people actually do that. I mainly watch YT on a 1080p display, where it usually defaults to 720p if I don't intervene. About the only time I do increase it is if it drops to 360p for no apparent reason. I also use Prime but have no idea what settings that uses. It's "good enough".

[TVwazhere]

"Standard" definition.... So 480P? Yeah I'm sure that's going to look great on a 55" TV. 

[Neftex]

11 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

I ask, does steaming really need to at 4k? No. I have a UHD capable TV but HD looks just fine to me.

 

Most people dont have access to anything but DSL speeds so this move makes sense.

people with dsl speeds wont watch 4k content then and people with better would watch whatever they like? i dont see why 4k users should be downgraded just because someone else cant watch 4k

[Valentyn]

18 minutes ago, Twilight said:

i live in the netherlands in a small village about 20km ( or 2 other towns) away from the nearest highway, so pretty much in the middle of nowhere and i can get a 500/500 fibre connection for a relatively speaking low amount of money. 

I'm in the Irish Midlands in a village, and you can get 1000/250 fibre here for €55 a month. First 6 months of the contract are €25 as well.


 

[SansVarnic]

2 minutes ago, Neftex said:

people with dsl speeds wont watch 4k content then and people with better would watch whatever they like? i dont see why 4k users should be downgraded just because someone else cant watch 4k

Good point

[Valentyn]

3 minutes ago, yaboistar said:

did that happen in the 3 days the irish became productive after the pubs closed?
 

jokes aside, they really ought to get on with that over here because we are embarassingly far behind

It did, we also developed a COVID 19 test that gives results within 15 minutes.

I'm lucky because my company covers most of the cost of my broadband bill also; since I work from home

[Valentyn]

1 minute ago, yaboistar said:

it's amazing what father jack can do when he sobers up _{(i love my brick)}

The lack of cleaning fluids tends to really open up the synapses.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

38 minutes ago, porina said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51968302

 

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/19/keep-calm-and-switch-to-sd/

 

This makes you think, just how good or bad are the net connections out there? I don't mean us end users complaining about paying too much to get too little, but the system infrastructure as a whole.

 

I would expect infrastructure to be built on medium-run levels of "typical" usage, including infrequent but recurrent peaks. Some more critical services may be oversized (although, in many places I'd expect not even), but consumer internet, not likely.

Building and maintaining an infrastructure that 80% of the time isn't used to 80% of its capacity is expensive. Building and maintaining infrastructure that will only reach 80% usage in world catastrophe scenarios... is just too much, even more so if handled by private companies. And  you have to factor that government, military, etc, will want their own backups, whether on separate infrastructure or by reserving part of the common's capacity...

 

26 minutes ago, Neftex said:

people with dsl speeds wont watch 4k content then and people with better would watch whatever they like? i dont see why 4k users should be downgraded just because someone else cant watch 4k

It's not because someone else can't watch 4K; it's more likely related with how many people can watch 4K, how many do so simultaneously, and whether connection providers may eventually throttle Netflix on "exceptional circumstances" grounds if it doesn't self-restrain to some extent.

[DrMacintosh]

Can't blame Netflix. They are built around being able to supply a reasonable demand. The whole world engaging in social distancing and self isolation is not a reasonable thing to expect them to be prepared for. 

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Can't blame Netflix. They are built around being able to supply a reasonable demand. The whole world engaging in social distancing and self isolation is not a reasonable thing to expect them to be prepared for. 

Because expecting a service you're paying for to work is kinda their job. I'm paying, they should be delivering. Unless everyone is overselling their capabilities and when people want to use what they are paying for, we're suppose to be getting SD instead of Full HD? Yeah, how about go F yourself Netflix? It's already bad enough that it's really 720p in browser even though I'm paying for Full HD and they'd be pulling this crap? Nope.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

Because expecting a service you're paying for to work is kinda their job.

Except their service is working. When a grocery store runs out of food you don't yell at the manager, you yell at the people who bought 50 bags of bread all at once. 

[suicidalfranco]

so will they also refund the people who pay for standard and premium and above streaming. Cause if not i want an antitrust against Netflix 

[Blademaster91]

33 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because expecting a service you're paying for to work is kinda their job. I'm paying, they should be delivering. Unless everyone is overselling their capabilities and when people want to use what they are paying for, we're suppose to be getting SD instead of Full HD? Yeah, how about go F yourself Netflix? It's already bad enough that it's really 720p in browser even though I'm paying for Full HD and they'd be pulling this crap? Nope.

Well I can't really blame them, I doubt they anticipated to have that many users at once all at home streaming in 4k. I'd rather downgrade to SD and still have the service work than not at all.

[Dabombinable]

If the ISP can't provide all of their customers with the bandwidth stated in their plans...shouldn't the EU be going after them instead of streaming services?

[FloRolf]

Soooo will I get my money back? 

Standard subscription is like 7,99 and I pay 15,99€ for the UHD one and now I don't get UHD anymore? 

[Commodus]

57 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

If the ISP can't provide all of their customers with the bandwidth stated in their plans...should the EU be going after them instead of streaming services?

Something tells me that regulators really aren't worried about pushing ISPs to upgrade their networks so that you can watch Netflix in 4K during a pandemic.  This is a solution they can implement much sooner, and makes more sense for a once-in-a-lifetime temporary situation.

[Thaldor]

Currently it's just a recommendation from EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton for users to lower their own streaming quality when HD is not necessary. Breton did have a phone call to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings where they did talk about the possibility for Netflix to do it automatically during high traffic hours. Nothing is done or even decided to be done.

 

At least in Finland there is a problem with "internet infrastructure" getting overloaded now that those who can do their work from their homes. But the problem isn't that the backbone or even the switches or access points getting overloaded, it's that people forget to switch from their work connection back to their own and manage to overload their workplaces VPN tunneling. Finnish Governments ICT-provider, Valtori, has told that they have had at most 30 000 users with remote access (source in Finnish) and they have needed to cut access to YLE Areena (Finnish national broadcast companys streaming service) and YouTube from remote users to fight the overloading of their tunneling.

[WereCatf]

4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Except their service is working. When a grocery store runs out of food you don't yell at the manager, you yell at the people who bought 50 bags of bread all at once. 

That analogy doesn't work, you don't subscribe to a grocery store. Also, you're comparing digital content with physical items -- one can't run out of digital content.