Netflix To Reduce EU Bandwidth by 25%

Netflix is cutting back on the bandwidth it takes to stream videos to members in the European Union after a European Commission member voiced concerns over network strain. From a report: "Following the discussions between Commissioner Thierry Breton and Reed Hastings -- and given the extraordinary challenges raised by the coronavirus -- Netflix has decided to begin reducing bit rates across all our streams in Europe for 30 days," a Netflix spokesperson told Protocol. "We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25 percent while also ensuring a good quality service for our members."

That is nothing

[mister.woody]

I wonder if PornHub would do the same

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Dunbal]

The thing is that much of the content already only is 720p and not 1080 or 4K

Italy gets free premium now though :)

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[sarren1901]

Sounds like that's just a fancy title if the bit rate is cut. Bye bye 4k. I wonder how many people have a 4k TV even. I'm sure it's a decent amount but I would be interested in seeing what percentage each bit rate is being used. Is it mostly 4k, 1080p or 720p?

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[jaklode]

I have a good 4K screen in my primary home, with a gigabit connection. I have a usable 4K screen in my second home with a connection topping out at like 14 Mbit/s... That said, that will go to 400 Mbit/s FTTH this year, hopefully.

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[phalse phace]

Doesn't the U.S. subsidizes broadband providers too? FCC keeps giving [slashdot.org] U.S. providers money [theverge.com] to build out [slashdot.org] their networks, but they'll only put in the minimum and reap all the benefits.

Americans are lucky to have more than 1 choice for a provider while paying 5x as much as people in the EU because the FCC keeps killing initiatives aimed at promoting broadband competition [slashdot.org].

Re:Ha!

[MikeDataLink]

Americans are lucky to have more than 1 choice for a provider while paying 5x as much as people in the EU because the FCC keeps killing initiatives aimed at promoting broadband competition [slashdot.org].

In the 1990's my brother and I ran a dial-up ISP. It did pretty well and we sold it to Internet America.

During the time before we sold, we tried to get into the DSL business in our local city in Texas. We had an under-served area that was between city and rural life with only a single ISP (AT&T).

I must have made 1000 phone calls to various municipalities and government organizations trying to get authorized to install my own DSLAMs and cabling. Stonewalled at every single corner.

Not allowed to use AT&T (back then SWBell) poles. "But I thought he universal service fund paid for those poles?" Too bad. They have exclusive rights to them.

Not allowed to bury cable. "But I thought those right of ways were owned by the city?" Too bad. We have an exclusive agreement with ATT.

So much for free market capitalism... We finally gave up.

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[WhimsyMorning]

These days, while some smaller ones are still around, pretty much all they own are the IP addresses and the equipment at the Demarc and IXP, and all the cable getting the traffic from them to the end-user is rented out from one of the major players. You can't install new cable - you rent it, and it amounts to all the smaller ISP's just being a middle man between you and the major ISP's.

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[Dunbal]

There were so many choices to choose from. You had the large well-known companies like AOL, CompuServe,

I remember them too. But if you happened to live outside the area of one of their direct nodes, you were suddenly limited in terms of choice - TELENET or DATAPAC, with their applicable surcharges... the actual backbones have always been owned by only a select few.

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[SirAstral]

"So much for free market capitalism... We finally gave up."

That's the trick. To make you think you have a free-market. And now you found out the truth the hard way, by losing out on a business you tried to build.

And you fell for the lie anyways despite personal experience and like everyone else... blamed free-market capitalism when that is not even the problem.

when you blame an ism for a problem, you are a problem.

The blame is greed and corruption.

Neither Socialism or Capitalism will save you from it. Ea

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[SuperKendall]

Not allowed to bury cable

Seeing as how it was in Texas, I would have just forged a permit and started digging.

You could fund the digging operation by simultaneously suing the city and ATT....

I know it's all in the past, maybe someone could retry. Especially now with Covid19, you can get away with a lot.

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[Darinbob]

The business model make sense.
1) government gives you money to improve service
2) do nothing?
3) profit
4) repeat...

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[Opportunist]

It's working great, thanks for your concern.

Then again, we're starting at about ten times of what you consider 100%, so 25% less is still 750% of what you dream of.

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[higuita]

it is working awesome!, thanks you!!
we get cheap and fast internet all over europe, even outside cities AND still get a working healthcare with our taxes.

I feel sad about USA people, may have less taxes, but then have to pay for expensive healthcare insurance (that never cover everything) AND have a dialup internet outside cities (and still bad or expensive internet in cities)... but do not worry, they have cheap guns and ammo, for sure that is important!!

Now i will go to watch some video on my 4G mobile,

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[account_deleted]

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Net Neutralizers Throttle? End Times?

[kd3bj]

Seems ironic to me that Netflix is throttling. In other news, my ISP is telling me that they've removed bandwidth limits. Surely these are end times.

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[Lordpidey]

I wouldn't be surprised if the US had lower bitrate videos to start with.

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[bloodhawk]

and you think disney+ won't also be instructed to reduce bandwidth?

So... they're cutting the auto-playing previews?

[totallyarb]

It wouldn't surprise me if at any given time, for every three users actually watching something, there is at least one who's just browsing through the catalog, wading through 100 auto-playing previews for things they have no interest in before finding something they like. Simply turning off auto-preview would save that 25% bandwidth at a stroke.

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[phalse phace]

Wish Netflix would kill auto play too.

I hate it when I come across something that might seem interesting and when I select it to read the description, it starts automatically playing without me selecting play. Or is this just a Roku thing?

Re:So... they're cutting the auto-playing previews

[Anubis IV]

For anyone who wasn't aware of it already from your comment, yes, it is now possible to disable Netflix's auto-previews.

- Go to your Account page [netflix.com]
- Click on Playback settings
- Uncheck "Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices"

Please note that this applies on a profile-by-profile basis, so if you have multiple profiles in your account, you'll need to apply it across each one individually.

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[mabinogi]

For the first time in 22 years, Slashdot has been useful for something.

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[MariusBoo]

This is the most useful thing I have read on Slashdot ever. And on the internet in the last few weeks. Good job, sir!

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[MikeDataLink]

Holy crap. I just did this!!!!!!

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[imidan]

We did this as soon as I read your comment. Thank you.

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[Solandri]

While I hate auto-playing previews too, 25% of the bandwidth in previews would imply that for every hour you spend watching stuff on Netflix, you spend 20 minutes searching for something to watch (a 3:1 ratio). I don't think it's quite that bad.

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[account_deleted]

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Panic Torrenting

[bluescrn]

So now people start to fear an internet outage, and start panic-downloading TV, movies, porn, games, Linux ISOs... causing the whole net to go down?

Re:Panic Torrenting

[DontBeAMoran]

I'm downloading paper toilet right now.

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[DontBeAMoran]

toilet paper*, obviously.

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[Fly Swatter]

But if you are torrenting, it could come in any order really. The shit might even come last..

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[Opportunist]

They made a movie of that now?

Pretty sure it's full of shit.

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[DontBeAMoran]

Yeah I just watched it, and it's crap.

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[grep -v '.*' *]

I'm downloading paper toilet right now.

You wouldn't download a car but you WOULD download toilet paper and exacerbate the non-shortage?

You monster.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

I wouldn't download just a car; I'd gladly download a whole list!

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[antdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] needs to be updated for those who pirate TPs. ;)

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[olsmeister]

The Cloud is infinite.

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[commoncause]

PUBG Mobile game maps can be quite large files. So, I'll just throw that in for the mix. Yes, I know someone mentioned games, but parts of games (including updates) can be large too.

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[sarren1901]

With no Internet, what would the point be? Single player, but do any of these games even offer single player with AI bots?

self-quarantine

[bugs2squash]

Because staying at home doesn't suck enough.

Maybe they should save the bandwidth by disabling useless video in team viewer, webex and zoom.

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[account_deleted]

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[jungletek]

If you're not watching it on MS Edge (IIRC), then you're only getting 720p max. There are browser extensions for Chrome/Firefox/etc. to enable 1080p streams in those "unsupported" browsers.

You can check the currently playing video stats by using the debug key-combo: CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D

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[blahbooboo]

If you're not watching it on MS Edge (IIRC), then you're only getting 720p max. There are browser extensions for Chrome/Firefox/etc. to enable 1080p streams in those "unsupported" browsers.

You can check the currently playing video stats by using the debug key-combo: CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D

Are you sure about this??

EU or Europe?

[mccalli]

Article mixes the two. In the UK at least Netflix pricing higher for HD streams. If they're cutting it, then I'd like a lower bill please.

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[nashv]

There is no difference at the moment. UK is subject to EU regulation until the end of the year.

Cut bandwidth, not resolution

[jaklode]

Netflix offers 4K at rates between 12 and 25 Mbit/s, so cutting by 25% is not a huge deal there at least. Likewise, 1080p goes from 3 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s or so, so again, cutting by 25% means the quality gets slightly worse.

but forgets to

[KingBenny]

cut the price by 30% so no one gets the excuse to pirate it ? ... i mean its all pirates here after all ! (and socialists ... and leftie muslim dicksuckers and jews and stuff other words that probably will be filtered) actually not ... most piracy seems to be happening in the free world last time i hurrd ...