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This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)? You cannot decide
by newbie578 7y ago
This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)?
You cannot decide by yourself to lower the quality of your services and keep the price same.
Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from these type of situations. I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg.
"The video-streaming provider said lowering the picture quality would reduce Netflix data consumption by 25%.
But it said viewers would still find the picture quality good."
How would they know what I find still good, if I found it still good than I wouldn't have taken the premium plan!!
So many fallacies in this way of thinking..
- moonbas3 7y agoThis was basically requested by the EU so we don't run into anymore trouble by crashing the interwebs.
- ralusek 7y agoDon't you think it's okay for us to be slightly understanding and forgiving that there are some individuals and companies that aren't simply capable of flawlessly and immediately adjusting to major changes in their realities at the drop of a hat? I'm sure their usage is through the roof, and they probably didn't predict a pandemic with quarantines into their infrastructure improvements modeled around predictable usage. Also, it wouldn't surprise me at all if ISPs are also feeling a bit of a strain, and are putting some degree of pressure on streaming platforms to lighten their loads if possible.
- wor3q 7y agoJust cut the price to match SD plan and everything is OK. Will Netflix be understanding and forgiving if pandemic would cut our income, so we wouldn't be capable of paying for subscription and started pirating their originals?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> Will Netflix be understanding and forgiving if pandemic would cut our income, so we wouldn't be capable of paying for subscription and started pirating their originals? Perhaps. Amazon Videos and Pornhub Premium are both free in Italy, for example. I don't see anything about Netflix being free there, though.
- hrktb 7y agoThe ISPs have been under that pressure for decades and dragged their feet because they had monopolies to protect them. Getting pity for them when the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan is a big ask IMO. On Netflix’s side, they sure are in a hard place, I’d wish govs. would foot part of the bill, as it’s directly helping people stay at home.
- avh02 7y agoI think it's times like this where the government should just sigh and once this is over, come back to have a very stern conversation with ISPs. Unfortunately internet is critical infrastructure, and kicking and screaming "this is bull" doesn't help alleviate traffic. I'm in Europe, I'm kind of "wtf?" about this, but I get it. I'd rather have lower quality netflix than a broken internet where I can't work from home and have to figure out how I earn my paycheck.
- azepoi 7y agoThere will be a lot of very stern conversations when this is over...
- pythonaut_16 7y agoThis position is flawed IMO. We postpone the hard conversation to get through the crisis. Then after the crisis the hard conversation never happens.
- avh02 7y agoi guess how I take things personally vs how an org takes it, but I don't think it would be productive to berate someone for mistakes made while they're trying to fix/respond to it. At that point what's done is done and all that matters is handling it. It'd just add to the cognitive load and noise. But you're right, people also forget to come back and be like "let's talk" - at the same time - given how relatively embarrassing this is for a government (and how economy-critical it is) I'm definite this conversation will be had.
- martin_a 7y agoThat is because ISPs in Europe are a piece of shit, maximizing profits of their users while minimizing investments in the infrastructure. This is not about Corona, this is not about "extraordinary situations", this is about European online infrastructure being garbage and now that it's getting really used for once, everything starts to crumble.
- berkes 7y agoEurope has very different regions. Some countries have the best infrastructure, with nearly everyone on glassfiber, while others only have cripled ASDL. You really cannot make a statement like 'Europe has a poor internet infrastructure', without (i) comparing it to somwhere else and (ii) highlighting the differences in regions. I mean, I'm pretty confident that everyone in Europe has better internet than everyone in Cuba or Zimbabwe.
- IAmNotAFix 7y agoNobody gives a fuck about not being able to watch 4K. They just want to not pay 4K when you can't get 4K.
- skrebbel 7y agoSo.. click the downgrade button?
- wwweston 7y agoYou know, for a while I thought “the doors aren’t automatic at the REI” might be the ultimate first world problem, but now I think “I have to suffer through my pandemic passtime shows in standard definition? where are my LAWYERS?” might be in first place.
- Dylan16807 7y agoRemember what the opposite side of the coin is. This isn't a consequence of the virus. This is offsetting the other first world problem of slightly slow internet. There's no greater cause being served here.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThis is not "other first world problem", it's an unprecedented situation in which a good chunk of the world's population needs to be kept at home for extended periods of time. Preserving morale is important for preserving social distancing, which is important for dealing with the pandemic. Not to mention, everyone who isn't on Netflix now is probably videoconferencing. Which also elevates this problem to "important for preserving the economy" level.
- Dylan16807 7y agoYou can do plenty of morale-preserving things on a slightly janky connection. And being worried about some visual stutter on your teleconference is solidly in the unimportant problem pile.
- macleginn 7y agoTeleconferencing very quickly becomes unusable on a really congested line.
- immigrantsheep 7y agoSpecially in Germany where the quality of the internet connections is really bad.
- CogitoCogito 7y agoSo cancel?
- jon889 7y agoPeople are dying, you can handle a slightly worse video quality.
- emerongi 7y agoThat's not the point though. My gym was closed and everyone's membership was automatically paused, they don't get to keep charging people. I'm fine with not going to the gym and I'm fine with a lower Netflix quality. But you shouldn't charge me for a service that you're simply not providing anymore. Netflix should downgrade everyone's plan automatically or just charge them less.
- vnnkov 7y agoAs i understand they couldn't just charge less or change your plan because of bureacracy and all legal things. What they can do is give free month to all who was affected by this change. Or you could cancel your subscription if you can't live without 4k
- pythonaut_16 7y ago"We acknowledge that this decision impacts the quality that our customers have come to expect. We appreciate your patience as we all face these trying times together, and we will explore additional options to make sure our customers are treated fairly and are fully satisfied with our service." That's basically all they had to say. Something to the effect of "This sucks but it's necessary and needed to be done quickly. We'll try to make it up to you." Then figure out whether to refund people on the higher plans or give them a free month or credit on their account or something.
- jon889 7y ago"This is pure bullshit." vs "Netflix should downgrade everyone's plan automatically or just charge them less" The way it was said in the parent comment was ridiculous.
- hotgeart 7y agoAgain it's not Netflix, It's the ISP that are crying because ppl use to much bandwidth.
- izacus 7y agoAnd it's Netflix charging extra for extra quality which they now won't deliver. If they charge everyone the SD package price, noone will really complain. But they will continue charging for a service they're not providing anymore. It's like food delivery man continuing to charge you for cancelled deliveries because they were found to have salmonella.
- 0x008 7y agoHave you by any chance heard of the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure ? You can get out of basically any legal obligation whatsoever if the forces at hand are beyond your control. And COVID certainly is.
- acd10j 7y agoThis will free up critical bandwidth that will enable more work from home and remote teleconferencing. We can’t increase available bandwidth overnight. It is better to suffer slightly decreased internet speed compared to lots of dropped packets if Internet pipes are clogged.
- martin_a 7y agoIt's not like ISPs could have build and extended their bandwidth over the last years, for example with the 40 €/month my father pays for < 16 MBit internet connection.
- avh02 7y agocounter-anecdote: i pay 40 euros for 200 Mbit edit:misspelling
- znpy 7y agoI pay €24,95/month for 1gpbs down / 200mbps up (ftth).
- martin_a 7y agoI get 100 MBit for 40 €/month. As mentioned in another comment, it's not about Netflix but doing home office during lockdown, remote work in general and more. People in those "underdeveloped" areas are really fucked, altough they pay the same money that I do. They just don't simply get anything (better) for that.
- lentil_soup 7y agoWhere is that? I think internet quality varies quite a lot within the EU, urban vs rural, etc so we can'treally generalise. I pay less than 40eur for a 600mbit connection.
- martin_a 7y agoIn Germany, 40 €/month can get you anything between <16 MBit (more like 4 MBit where I come from/my family lives) and 200 MBit. While the infrastructure is quite stable where it has been extended, those rural areas ("not prioritized for broadband builds") are also affected by the lockdown, people have to work from home, use the internet all day etc. pp. In those places, the infrastructure reaches its limits pretty quickly all the time. This will cause _serious_ damage to local businesses for no good reason other than ISPs unwillingness to invest there.
- joppy 7y agoDuring a pandemic which has forced a huge number of people to stay at home and is currently crashing the economy and costing hundreds of lives per day, it could help to be a little more sympathetic to measures like this. They might not be perfect, because everyone is having to react so quickly to what is going on, but we can appreciate that this is not a normal event and the vast majority of companies have never planned for it (random ISPs, for example). If this article [1] from Netflix is to be believed, 4K uses five times the bandwidth of HD, and is surely an easy target for something that can be traded off while not affecting people's moral wellbeing too much. Suffering a video quality decrease would seem a small price to pay for not causing further problems, and perhaps once this is all over, or at least we've stopped flying by the seats of our pants, we can see if people should receive refunds of a few dollars a month. [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
- csunbird 7y agoExcept, people are PAYING for that upgrade.
- john_alan 7y agoYou can't fix stupid. It's amazing how wonderfully liberal and thoughtful people are with other people's money.
- hollander 7y agoTwo or four euros per month. Call the army! I would start a class action suite. /s This stupid selfish attitude is not helping. Netflix will probably issue a statement that they will refund all those affected. And if you don't like it, downgrade! You probably have plenty of time if this is an issue for you.
- csunbird 7y agoWhat I am telling here is, if you are unable to meet the criteria that you are getting paid for, then you need to refund the difference. They are not doing that. It is not about being selfish here, think more about it.
- IAmEveryone 7y ago> I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg. Strasbourg is the European Court of Human Rights. Complaining to them about a lack of detail in your Netflix stream during a pandemic will probably not give you the results you want.
- unionpivo 7y agoYou do know that EU begged them to do it right ? So they will be thanking them not suing them. They are doing EU a favor, with this one. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-in-talks-with-netflix-about-reducing-internet-congestion/ https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-in-talks-with-netfl... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/19/eu-netflix-sd-streaming-to-conserve-internet/?guccounter=1 https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/19/eu-netflix-sd-streaming-...
- iamaelephant 7y agoDude there's a global pandemic. From the bottom of my heart, fuck you.
- sytelus 7y agoAny business-customer agreements can be overridden by government mandates in an emergency. So no, this is no bs.
- valdiorn 7y agoThis might be the most entitled thing I've read all month. You might even be more entitled than the toilet paper hoarders.
- newbie578 7y agoThere are a lot of people responding so I will answer it this way for visibility. I HAVE NO PROBLEM with Netflix reducing video quality. What I do have a problem with is Netflix KEEPING THE PRICE THE SAME. If my local gym chain (Gyms4You) can freeze memberships for EVERYONE and not price it in than Netflix can atleast do the same regarding the "premium" plan. I understand that this is an unprecented crisis, but that doesn't mean we don't have to follow the rules which we are able to follow without risking our health and well being.
- acd10j 7y agoYou are free to cancel your Netflix subscription or take less quality plan, Netflix is not doing this because of their backend, They are doing it because ISP requested them. Alternative would be something like ISPs throttling Netflix themselves.
- Symbiote 7y agoBefore ranting on HN, repeating the same point that's made 50 times in this discussion, how about giving Netflix time to respond? The operations department won't have had the authority to give a €4 refund to everyone overnight (in Europe). They're probably working from home. See what happens i a few days time.
- pythonaut_16 7y agoDefending Netflix here is asinine. They have handled this communication poorly, plain and simple. All they had to do was acknowledge that cutting bitrates might raise concerns about the quality of the service and the amount they charge and that they would look into it. This is a brand image issue and is exactly the type of issue that should escalate quickly to the CEO if necessary.
- Goz3rr 7y agoFrom what I'm reading in the article, they're cutting the bitrates and not the resolution. This would mean they're still serving you FullHD/4K but with worse quality. From a quick search, I can't find any guarantees on what bitrates Netflix will serve you. In fact, they already use variable bitrates that can differ per episode of a series. I don't see your legal retribution having much chance of succeeding.
- verytrivial 7y agoIf this is important to you right now, cancel your membership, right now. Others will happily share the bandwidth you relinquish (says someone who just set the bandwidth limit to "LOW" because my kids are not in school as are hundreds of other households in my area. They couldn't care less about the quality.)
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoExactly; vote with your wallet, not comments on HN.
- davestephens 7y agoYou have to sit at home and watch Netflix in SD, whilst there are people out there literally putting their lives at risk to save others? Poor you!
- glenneroo 7y agoDid nobody read the article? There are so many comments here about going to SD, but FTA they aren't reducing resolution, rather just the bitrate: > Several factors influence how much data is used when streaming a movie online. > One of them is video resolution, including whether a video is high-definition (HD) or ultra-high definition 4K. > Another is bitrate, which influences how clear and smooth videos look when streamed online > Videos with a higher bitrate tend to look less "blocky" or pixelated, but use more data. > Out of these two, Netflix says it will cut its streaming bitrates.
- g0ph3r 7y agoI'm not sure that the quality lowering already started but the last two movies I watched yesterday and today had really poor quality. I mean they definitely seemed like an average pirated torrent not the HD content I'm used to see on Netflix. My internet connection is fine tho. Still low latency, no jitter.
- neotek 7y agoI look forward to reading about this comment on n-gate.
- NKCSS 7y agoDude, this was asked of NetFlix by the European government, it's not something they are doing by themselves... https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-in-talks-with-netflix-about-reducing-internet-congestion/ https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-in-talks-with-netfl...
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI read yesterday that someone managed to hack Netflix' data packets and discovered their 4K is not actually 4K either; if that is the case, they're liable for false advertising.
- latexr 7y ago> Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from these type of situations. I also used to brood over “if I had infinite money” revenge fantasies. They lost their appeal when I realised the answer is the same in all cases: “if I had that kind of money, this wouldn’t have bothered me”.
- jrockway 7y agoI don't think that's necessarily true. Governments routinely fine companies (and people) small amounts of money. They do not need it; the fine isn't about them getting money. It's about deterring people from negative behavior. In some cases, bailouts make sense. In the ISP industry, they don't make much sense. ISPs were offered a monopoly and operate their networks at approximately 95% profit. Now there is a crisis and they've been spending that 95% not on network upgrades, but on dividends or stock buybacks, and it's all blowing up. I don't think the governments need to subsidize that. The Internet should be bad during this crisis so that people are motivated to fix the problems after the crisis. Asking one content provider to subsidize them doesn't help anything in the long run, and if there isn't pain now, this will all be forgotten after the Coronavirus issue. Things like the airlines are different. They bought multi-million dollar jets with the assumption that they'd be in the air 22 hours a day. Now they're on the ground, and the financials simply don't work under those conditions. That is the the kind of thing society needs to insure against (if they want air travel, anyway, which does seem to be quite useful). In the end, I'm very cynical about all of this. Sometimes I wonder if the whole "flatten the curve" thing is being promoted because it's an election year and when your whole family dies from COVID-19, you're a lot less likely to show up at a rally to eliminate Obamacare. We need to cover our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears to think the status quo is OK, so here we are. People will invest a lot into maintaining the status quo, be it healthcare or shitty ISPs.
- latexr 7y ago> Governments routinely fine companies (and people) small amounts of money. They do not need it; the fine isn't about them getting money. It's about deterring people from negative behavior. That’s not a personal revenge fantasy. Your post is unrelated to my point.
- pergadad 7y agoIt's $€2 per month difference. You still get part of the benefits, such as access for more devices. While I'd appreciate getting those €2 honestly I find it pretty small minded if that's your first concern. They were asked to reduce load to avoid issues for vital instructure and all the people working from home. I appreciate and am grateful that they followed this request. It's for the benefit of all and if they save a few € in the process there really is no reason to be upset about it.
- Hamuko 7y agoWhere is 4K a 2 euro per month difference?
- chki 7y ago>I would love for this case to make it to the European Court in Strasbourg Are you seriously implying that this is a human rights issue? Because that's what the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is for. If you're talking about the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg this does't really make sense either but at least somewhat.
- 3953584 7y agoI unsubscribed, when I learned they don't deliver the proclaimed resolution to Linux browsers. How about you warn me about that beforehand? They know my Browser's fingerprint. That's just a scam.