6 ms·

Netflix Goes Super HD

31 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

pavel_lishin 14y ago
Not at work or at home it doesn't: > Your Internet Provider is not configured for Super HD yet.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > Netflix Super HD requires that your Internet Provider is part of the Netflix Open Connect network. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? What the fuck happened to net neutrality? The WHOLE POINT of the internet is that you don't have to deal with this sort of shit. And people wonder why piracy still exists. I can get a 1080p copy of a movie from torrents no matter what ISP I'm on.
  - Scorponok 14y ago
    I assume they'll want to set up edge caches at all the ISPs or something before going live with this, to save on their bandwidth costs?
  - cynicalkane 14y ago
    Piracy still exists because Netflix requires infrastructure to give you very high bandwidth movies at zero marginal cost?
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
      If it costs more, then charge more. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell
      - cynicalkane 14y ago
        Imagine the following scenario. Netflix: Okay, everyone can have HD movies now, but they cost more. Also, only if your ISP supports it because hey these require 5Mbps from edge locations. So it's the same as before just more expensive. w1ntermute: What the fuck? They want to charge extra money for movies that my ISP is capable of delivering for free? This is why piracy exists.
        w1ntermute 14y ago
        That's a non sequitur. Why should the ISP have to "support" it in the first place?
  - ajross 14y ago
    To be fair: net neutrality as a policy is intended to protect the content providers from unfair pseudo-extortion and competition from the (literally entrenched, and in some cases monopolistic) consumer ISPs. The point was to prevent Comcast from making a deal with Microsoft for fast Bing searches and then squeezing Google, etc... What's happening here is the opposite: Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally. It no less onerous to the consumer, but it doesn't fit the policy goals that net neutrality is designed to enforce. That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay.
    - elemeno 14y ago
      > That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay. No they haven't. They're simply offering a 'better' service to a subset of their customers, they're not stopping you from watching a film if you don't use an ISP that peers with them.
    - shardling 14y ago
      I believe netflix already caches regular content locally with ISPs.
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      "Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally." Ironically, my 105mbps cable connection with Comcast. The SuperHD service tells me to "Ask my ISP to join the Open Connect Network", helpfully.
  - elemeno 14y ago
    No, it's a purely practical consideration. Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well. What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      It was an amazing let down to see this. Despite my 100mbps connection, I get a line of text that says nothing more than "Ask your ISP to join the Netflix Open Connect Network". Yeah, uhh, okay. My ISP is the largest in the country. If you can't arrange your content sharing network with them, I'm fairly sure me calling a Tier 1 CSR reading off a scripted dialog is going to make all the difference in the world.
      - pavel_lishin 14y ago
        Also, one vote never makes a difference, so why bother?
        FireBeyond 14y ago
        The point is, and maybe I was vague about it, hence my downvotes: If Netflix is offering a service and can't even get the largest, most common ISP that their customers use to agree to their "free" peering arrangements to offer even better content, then that appears a little ... disappointing, and not particularly hope-inducing to me.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Netflix still works fantastically well as a dvd rental service.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Comcast happened. http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast-level-3-and-you/ http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast-... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/peers-or-not-comcast-and-level-3-slug-it-out-at-fccs-doorstep/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/peers-or-not-comc...
  - biot 14y ago
    Take a chill pill, then read https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect to inform yourself what it's about. Hint: cost savings for Netflix and the ISP. The ISP can even get free storage appliance hardware from Netflix to cut their out-of-network costs for streaming Nextflix content to next to nothing (only needing to cache new content, presumably). It's equivalent to you complaining about road neutrality should a company only deliver their products via Fedex trucks. The fact that the company chooses to only deliver their goods via Fedex doesn't affect your right to drive whatever street legal vehicle you want on the highway.
- pepsi 14y ago
  >Netflix Super HD requires an internet connection with at least 5Mb/s download. Not all devices can play Super HD. Super HD is only available via Internet Providers that are part of the Open Connect network. From https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect: >ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network. >Major ISPs around the world have already connected to Open Connect, including Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and more. That sounds like something that would be hard to get an American ISP to agree to, since some have their own offerings (Comcast's stake in Hulu and own Xfinity, for example.)
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    Cablevision is an American ISP, I believe - at least, they have some service coverage here in New York City.
  - jvehent 14y ago
    Yep. Welcome to the beautiful world of BGP peering policies. Lot's of fights, dramas, one-night-stands, and very little transparency on who does what.
    - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
      Which isn't so different from the cableco/network dynamic we've had forever.
  - crymer11 14y ago
    FWIW, EPB in Chattanooga, TN is a part of it.
mjmahone17 14y ago
Interesting: I'd be interested in seeing a list of ISPs that support Super HD (presumably this list will be forthcoming once they've got at least one big-ish name ISP). But also, this seems like a method of Netflix trying to strong-arm ISPs/have more of an outwardly "harmonious" relationships with them. If an ISP supports Super HD, then how can they possibly complain that their customers are using too much bandwidth by viewing Netflix? Oh, and if you're a netflix customer, here's an alternative to your curmudgeonly ISP that supports Super HD!
kmfrk 14y ago
Does this imply that Netflix has been 720p until now, or what exactly does the term mean? I thought we were over the horribleness of "HD Ready" and "Full HD".
- KwanEsq 14y ago
  Apparently PS3 and some other devices have already been able to do 1080p [1] Maybe there is also a change in compression algorithm involved, which improves the quality at the same resolution? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netflix&oldid=532014151#cite_ref-47 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netflix&oldid=...
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Even things that were at 1080p tended to be real low bitrate. Ever notice that 1080p movies bought from iTunes are like 10% bigger than the 720p copy of the same movie?
whichdan 14y ago
Is this an issue of how much bandwidth is costing NetFlix or something? I pay Comcast for a 105Mbps connection, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to stream 5Mbps or even 5MBps. As an aside, my PS3 Slim's wireless card is really subpar, so I'd assume a wired connection would be required to take advantage of this on a console.
- IvyMike 14y ago
  It's obvious in retrospect but it took me a while to think of it in my own setup: set up a wireless bridge for the PS3. In my case, this had huge immediate returns for all streaming content.
- wmf 14y ago
  I think it's mostly to penalize ISPs that don't play ball, but I'm sure there is some cost aspect. I get the impression that PS3 networking is really slow, even wired. Trying to DLNA any video over 8 Mbps seems to cause stuttering and HD content from PSN downloads slower than real time.
KwanEsq 14y ago
"Your Internet Provider is ready for Super HD!" Shame about that 1.5Mb connection…
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  Can I ask whom that would be? No one else here on HN (myself, on Comcast, included) seems to be on a "ready" ISP.
  - canttestthis 14y ago
    My ISP, NCREN, (I think?) is Netflix ready.
  - KwanEsq 14y ago
    I'm in the UK and our provider is Be Un Limited [1][2], who use BT's exchanges. Unfortunately, we live in an area of London that is a notorious internet black-spot, so even though we pay for up to 16Mb, 1.5 is what speedtest.net tops out at. Given that though, I'm pretty impressed with what Netflix manage to do with what's available. Other services such as BBC's iPlayer and the on-demand of other TV networks are either vastly inferior quality or involve a lot of buffering (though seem to have improved over the lasty year). [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited [2]https://www.bethere.co.uk/ https://www.bethere.co.uk/
  - mnutt 14y ago
    My ISP, RCN, is "ready". I have 50Mb/5Mb.
bmelton 14y ago
Ignoring the argument about whether or not my ISP supports SuperHD yet, I have to ask the question -- What happened to Netflix? Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels, I can't even remember the last time I found something on Netflix worth watching. In fact, I took an inventory the other day to see whether or not it was even worth the $8 a month I'm paying for it, and of all the movies 'added' to Netflix since 2011, I was only able to recognize the titles of about five. Of those five, none of them were blockbusters I'd been waiting to see particularly. It seems that either their streaming catalog has grown stagnant, or to enjoy it I have to learn to study the independent movie scene more closely to figure out what is worth seeing. Did I miss a big chapter of their story? I know that many people had situated Netflix out of the '28-day window', but while I'm happy to wait another month to see most movies, I'd like to eventually see it at some point, and frankly, none of the 20 or so movies that I had gone to the theaters to see in that same time frame had ever appeared on Netflix as a streaming option.
- outside1234 14y ago
  Big data happened to Netflix. They moneyball their movies and only pick the ones that result in the most retention in an aggregate sense.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    Hostile content providers also happened to Netflix. I got a peek into how the studios feel about Netflix while at a previous job and they all see it as a snot-nosed punk that is acting to ruin the value of their precious content. They are firmly against the all-you-can-eat model that essentially defines Netflix. When Netflix was the only game in town they could change the minds of the content people by pulling up in fleets of money trucks, but now that there are viable alternatives that push rentals and digital ownership (via UltraViolet, etc), the content people are mostly just cutting Netflix off and hoping they die. Of course, Netflix is aware of this which is why they've started to get into the business of funding their own content.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Are you saying Netflix believes that people don't want to watch mainstream movies?

31 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

pavel_lishin 14y ago

Not at work or at home it doesn't: > Your Internet Provider is not configured for Super HD yet.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> Netflix Super HD requires that your Internet Provider is part of the Netflix Open Connect network. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? What the fuck happened to net neutrality? The WHOLE POINT of the internet is that you don't have to deal with this sort of shit. And people wonder why piracy still exists. I can get a 1080p copy of a movie from torrents no matter what ISP I'm on.
- Scorponok 14y ago
  I assume they'll want to set up edge caches at all the ISPs or something before going live with this, to save on their bandwidth costs?
- cynicalkane 14y ago
  Piracy still exists because Netflix requires infrastructure to give you very high bandwidth movies at zero marginal cost?
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    If it costs more, then charge more. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell
    - cynicalkane 14y ago
      Imagine the following scenario. Netflix: Okay, everyone can have HD movies now, but they cost more. Also, only if your ISP supports it because hey these require 5Mbps from edge locations. So it's the same as before just more expensive. w1ntermute: What the fuck? They want to charge extra money for movies that my ISP is capable of delivering for free? This is why piracy exists.
      - w1ntermute 14y ago
        That's a non sequitur. Why should the ISP have to "support" it in the first place?
- ajross 14y ago
  To be fair: net neutrality as a policy is intended to protect the content providers from unfair pseudo-extortion and competition from the (literally entrenched, and in some cases monopolistic) consumer ISPs. The point was to prevent Comcast from making a deal with Microsoft for fast Bing searches and then squeezing Google, etc... What's happening here is the opposite: Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally. It no less onerous to the consumer, but it doesn't fit the policy goals that net neutrality is designed to enforce. That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay.
  - elemeno 14y ago
    > That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay. No they haven't. They're simply offering a 'better' service to a subset of their customers, they're not stopping you from watching a film if you don't use an ISP that peers with them.
  - shardling 14y ago
    I believe netflix already caches regular content locally with ISPs.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    "Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally." Ironically, my 105mbps cable connection with Comcast. The SuperHD service tells me to "Ask my ISP to join the Open Connect Network", helpfully.
- elemeno 14y ago
  No, it's a purely practical consideration. Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well. What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    It was an amazing let down to see this. Despite my 100mbps connection, I get a line of text that says nothing more than "Ask your ISP to join the Netflix Open Connect Network". Yeah, uhh, okay. My ISP is the largest in the country. If you can't arrange your content sharing network with them, I'm fairly sure me calling a Tier 1 CSR reading off a scripted dialog is going to make all the difference in the world.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      Also, one vote never makes a difference, so why bother?
      - FireBeyond 14y ago
        The point is, and maybe I was vague about it, hence my downvotes: If Netflix is offering a service and can't even get the largest, most common ISP that their customers use to agree to their "free" peering arrangements to offer even better content, then that appears a little ... disappointing, and not particularly hope-inducing to me.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Netflix still works fantastically well as a dvd rental service.
- wmf 14y ago
  Comcast happened. http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast-level-3-and-you/ http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast-... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/peers-or-not-comcast-and-level-3-slug-it-out-at-fccs-doorstep/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/peers-or-not-comc...
- biot 14y ago
  Take a chill pill, then read https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect to inform yourself what it's about. Hint: cost savings for Netflix and the ISP. The ISP can even get free storage appliance hardware from Netflix to cut their out-of-network costs for streaming Nextflix content to next to nothing (only needing to cache new content, presumably). It's equivalent to you complaining about road neutrality should a company only deliver their products via Fedex trucks. The fact that the company chooses to only deliver their goods via Fedex doesn't affect your right to drive whatever street legal vehicle you want on the highway.
pepsi 14y ago
>Netflix Super HD requires an internet connection with at least 5Mb/s download. Not all devices can play Super HD. Super HD is only available via Internet Providers that are part of the Open Connect network. From https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect: >ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network. >Major ISPs around the world have already connected to Open Connect, including Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and more. That sounds like something that would be hard to get an American ISP to agree to, since some have their own offerings (Comcast's stake in Hulu and own Xfinity, for example.)
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  Cablevision is an American ISP, I believe - at least, they have some service coverage here in New York City.
- jvehent 14y ago
  Yep. Welcome to the beautiful world of BGP peering policies. Lot's of fights, dramas, one-night-stands, and very little transparency on who does what.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Which isn't so different from the cableco/network dynamic we've had forever.
- crymer11 14y ago
  FWIW, EPB in Chattanooga, TN is a part of it.

mjmahone17 14y ago

Interesting: I'd be interested in seeing a list of ISPs that support Super HD (presumably this list will be forthcoming once they've got at least one big-ish name ISP). But also, this seems like a method of Netflix trying to strong-arm ISPs/have more of an outwardly "harmonious" relationships with them. If an ISP supports Super HD, then how can they possibly complain that their customers are using too much bandwidth by viewing Netflix? Oh, and if you're a netflix customer, here's an alternative to your curmudgeonly ISP that supports Super HD!

kmfrk 14y ago

Does this imply that Netflix has been 720p until now, or what exactly does the term mean? I thought we were over the horribleness of "HD Ready" and "Full HD".

KwanEsq 14y ago
Apparently PS3 and some other devices have already been able to do 1080p [1] Maybe there is also a change in compression algorithm involved, which improves the quality at the same resolution? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netflix&oldid=532014151#cite_ref-47 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netflix&oldid=...
sliverstorm 14y ago
Even things that were at 1080p tended to be real low bitrate. Ever notice that 1080p movies bought from iTunes are like 10% bigger than the 720p copy of the same movie?

whichdan 14y ago

Is this an issue of how much bandwidth is costing NetFlix or something? I pay Comcast for a 105Mbps connection, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to stream 5Mbps or even 5MBps. As an aside, my PS3 Slim's wireless card is really subpar, so I'd assume a wired connection would be required to take advantage of this on a console.

IvyMike 14y ago
It's obvious in retrospect but it took me a while to think of it in my own setup: set up a wireless bridge for the PS3. In my case, this had huge immediate returns for all streaming content.
wmf 14y ago
I think it's mostly to penalize ISPs that don't play ball, but I'm sure there is some cost aspect. I get the impression that PS3 networking is really slow, even wired. Trying to DLNA any video over 8 Mbps seems to cause stuttering and HD content from PSN downloads slower than real time.

KwanEsq 14y ago

"Your Internet Provider is ready for Super HD!" Shame about that 1.5Mb connection…

ComputerGuru 14y ago
Can I ask whom that would be? No one else here on HN (myself, on Comcast, included) seems to be on a "ready" ISP.
- canttestthis 14y ago
  My ISP, NCREN, (I think?) is Netflix ready.
- KwanEsq 14y ago
  I'm in the UK and our provider is Be Un Limited [1][2], who use BT's exchanges. Unfortunately, we live in an area of London that is a notorious internet black-spot, so even though we pay for up to 16Mb, 1.5 is what speedtest.net tops out at. Given that though, I'm pretty impressed with what Netflix manage to do with what's available. Other services such as BBC's iPlayer and the on-demand of other TV networks are either vastly inferior quality or involve a lot of buffering (though seem to have improved over the lasty year). [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited [2]https://www.bethere.co.uk/ https://www.bethere.co.uk/
- mnutt 14y ago
  My ISP, RCN, is "ready". I have 50Mb/5Mb.

bmelton 14y ago

Ignoring the argument about whether or not my ISP supports SuperHD yet, I have to ask the question -- What happened to Netflix? Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels, I can't even remember the last time I found something on Netflix worth watching. In fact, I took an inventory the other day to see whether or not it was even worth the $8 a month I'm paying for it, and of all the movies 'added' to Netflix since 2011, I was only able to recognize the titles of about five. Of those five, none of them were blockbusters I'd been waiting to see particularly. It seems that either their streaming catalog has grown stagnant, or to enjoy it I have to learn to study the independent movie scene more closely to figure out what is worth seeing. Did I miss a big chapter of their story? I know that many people had situated Netflix out of the '28-day window', but while I'm happy to wait another month to see most movies, I'd like to eventually see it at some point, and frankly, none of the 20 or so movies that I had gone to the theaters to see in that same time frame had ever appeared on Netflix as a streaming option.

outside1234 14y ago
Big data happened to Netflix. They moneyball their movies and only pick the ones that result in the most retention in an aggregate sense.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  Hostile content providers also happened to Netflix. I got a peek into how the studios feel about Netflix while at a previous job and they all see it as a snot-nosed punk that is acting to ruin the value of their precious content. They are firmly against the all-you-can-eat model that essentially defines Netflix. When Netflix was the only game in town they could change the minds of the content people by pulling up in fleets of money trucks, but now that there are viable alternatives that push rentals and digital ownership (via UltraViolet, etc), the content people are mostly just cutting Netflix off and hoping they die. Of course, Netflix is aware of this which is why they've started to get into the business of funding their own content.
- wmf 14y ago
  Are you saying Netflix believes that people don't want to watch mainstream movies?