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> The actual cost of sending bits over the wire was trivial. If that's the case, is there any particular reason Netflix is charging more for access to 4K conte

• lscotte 8y ago
  The plan that gives you 4k also gives you 4 parallel streams instead of 2 (or 1 for the cheapest plan), so it's popular with people who share the account with others. But 4k/HDR is also a value-add that they charge for, but it doesn't mean that it costs more to provide it.
• jedberg 8y ago
  While the cost of video delivery is negligible, there are definitely increased costs for delivering 4K video. It takes more storage on the CDN box, and also takes more bandwidth on the outbound network port. That means you need more CDN boxes and more hard drives, which means renting more space and power and cooling. Also, you need to be closer to the customer for the 4K video since it's so high bandwidth, so that means more CDN deployments. You also have to get the 4K video to the CDN, which is more costly because of the extra copies and the large files. You also have to create all the 4K video files for all the devices, which takes a lot more processing time in the video pipeline. You also need higher res files from the studio, so of course they charge more for that since it costs them more to move the large files around, store them, and create them in the first place with better camera equipment and editing equipment.
• jogjayr 8y ago
  4K content is better than HD content - to someone, on some axis of "better". How is that an "artificial increase" then? The customer is receiving a higher quality product for a higher price but isn't forced into the more expensive plan; it seems perfectly fair.