Netflix further enhancing the Android Masterrace

[Thony]

I wonder how big the files are for HD subscribers (720p). If its between 400MB-1GB then im fine with my 32GB Nexus 5X.

 

This is a great feature. I would rather watch something on my phone than those crappy 360p airplane screens (Delta airlines !)

[dalekphalm]

18 hours ago, Thony said:

I wonder how big the files are for HD subscribers (720p). If its between 400MB-1GB then im fine with my 32GB Nexus 5X.

 

This is a great feature. I would rather watch something on my phone than those crappy 360p airplane screens (Delta airlines !)

The standard bitrate used by netflix is a tiered tree. For 720p, they used two different bitrates (h.264):

2350 Kbps

3000 Kbps

 

I assume this does not include audio, but the bitrate for audio is quite small by comparison.

 

If we assume this bitrate more or less represents the final bitrate seen by your Netflix player, we can calculate the following:

2 hour movie -> 60 minutes per hour - 120 minutes -> 60 seconds per minute = 7200 seconds per 2 hours.

 

Now some basic math:

2350 Mbps * 7200 seconds =

16,920,000 Kilobit (Kb) file size

Divide the above number by 8 to convert to Kilobytes (KB) = 2,115,000 KB

Divide the above number by 1024 to convert to MB = 2,065.4 MB

Divide the above number by 1024 again to convert to GB = 2.02 GB, or rounded, an even 2GB

 

That gives us, at the lower 720p bitrate, about 1GB per hour of content. I won't do the math here, but at the higher 3000 Kbps 720p bitrate, it equals roughly 1.25GB (actually 1.29GB to be precise) per hour of content.

 

1080p has a bitrate of either:

4300 Kbps or

5800 Kbps

 

Now, with that in mind, apparently they've adopted a new system in which titles are targeted on a case-by-case scenario for what bitrate to use (I don't know exactly how they choose), which can result in even higher bitrates being used then I've listed here (and much lower too).