With more people being forced to stay home to work or study due to the coronavirus outbreak, the need for more venues of online entertainment is on the rise. People are also starting to watch more movies online than they normally would, and as a result, this is putting quite a bit of strain on the internet.
So much so that over in Europe, Netflix has agreed that they will be lowering the streaming quality of its service for the next 30 days in a bid to help lessen the burden on internet service providers. According to Netflix’s estimates, by lowering the stream quality, it should help ease data consumption by as much as 25%.
So what does this mean for customers? For those who paid for the option to stream Netflix in 4K, don’t worry because resolution will not be affected. Instead, what will be affected will be the streaming bitrate. Bitrate affects how clear and smooth videos look when streamed online, so if you are living in Europe or the UK, don’t be surprised if your videos look a little choppier than usual.
At the moment, Netflix only plans on reducing video stream quality in the EU. There is no mention of whether they’ll be extending this practice to other countries who are in similar lockdown situations, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Filed in . Read more about Entertainment, Movies and Netflix. Source: bbc