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Television Movies The Almighty Buck

Netflix To Charge More For 4K Video 158

Posted by samzenpus from the premium-pay dept.
Mr D from 63 points out that watching Netflix in Ultra high-definition is going to cost you a little extra per month. A higher-resolution, 4K stream from Netflix will cost more. The company has boosted its monthly price for streaming ultrahigh-definition television and movies to $11.99 per month, citing the higher expenses associated with that content. In May, Netflix announced that its original series, such as House of Cards, would be available to stream in the 4K format, which offers roughly four times the resolution of current high-def TVs.
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Netflix To Charge More For 4K Video More

Netflix To Charge More For 4K Video

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  • Thats Fair (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    To me that doesn't seem like a bad deal. 3 bux more for 4k video, sounds good . Now only if there was alot of 4k video available

    • It's fair, but to be fair, there should be bandwidth to support that at the peering sites. In the LA area, Verizon Fios is so bad accessing Netflix, it buffers and reduces quality so often, I usually go to HBO GO just to avoid the quality issues. I'd pay more for better bandwidth.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Pretty sure that's not from Netflix's peering bandwidth, but from things like peak bandwidth throttling from ISP, or net neutrality issues, where the ISP is lowering priority.

      • Re: Thats Fair (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:37PM (#48134837) Journal

        I'd pay more for better bandwidth.

        The problem isn't the bandwidth. Verizon FIOS has the bandwidth, and Netflix has the Bandwidth. The problem is not the bandwidth, the problem is you, willing to "pay more" to get Verizon and Netflix to install a cable between their switches at the COLO facility, which is something they should do. But if Verizon FIOS is anything like Comcast, they want to charge Netflix to bring Netflix to their own customers.

        You are Netflix Customer
        You are Verizon FIOS Customer
        You are already paying for their service (both sides).

        • And now you'll be paying again since Netflix will pass the costs to you.

        • But if Verizon FIOS is anything like Comcast, they want to charge Netflix to bring Netflix to their own customers.

          Well, no. Netflix is already being brought to their customers. Like the guy said, he can use it, it just doesn't look pretty.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Shoten ( 260439 )

          I'd pay more for better bandwidth.

          The problem isn't the bandwidth. Verizon FIOS has the bandwidth, and Netflix has the Bandwidth. The problem is not the bandwidth, the problem is you, willing to "pay more" to get Verizon and Netflix to install a cable between their switches at the COLO facility, which is something they should do. But if Verizon FIOS is anything like Comcast, they want to charge Netflix to bring Netflix to their own customers.

          You are Netflix Customer
          You are Verizon FIOS Customer
          You are already paying for their service (both sides).

          Actually, the problem is bandwidth. Remember how it turns out that most big ISPs are throttling Netflix traffic, and trying to get Netflix to pay them extra to pass their content? Yeah, well, Netflix has had to cave a bit. Comcast is getting paid by Netflix now, and thus the more bandwidth needed, the higher the cost.

          But there are other challenges as well. Content providers charge more for media in multiple formats than they do for media in just one format. Pushing the data, even within Netflix, does r

          • Verizon Customers demanding Content, how dare they !

            In Netflix Case, they can provide ALL the content their (Verizon's, Comcast's etc) customers are demanding. Verizon and others are trying to pass the cost associated with the demands of their customers (bandwidth) onto Netflix. If Netflix can produce the content, and deliver it to Verizon, and yet Verizon doesn't upgrade their capacity, because they want get more money, then they should be going to Joe Customer for more money to pay for Joe Customer's dema

        • You are Netflix Customer
          You are Verizon FIOS Customer
          You are already paying for their service (both sides).

          You are a potential customer for Verizon's (in-house) streaming offerings.
          Hence the conflict between Verizon and Netflix.

          Verizon owned 65% of the now-defunct Redbox Instant.
          Speculation is that the Redbox Instant team will be retasked to work on Verizon's new digital video service. [reuters.com]

        • I will take the net neutrality viewpoint here.

          If Netflix is paying for the upload, and I am paying for the download, like net neutrality proponents say, the here's what I see.

          I pay more for faster download speeds. Not for prioritization, but I pay more for a fatter pipe.

          Do I expect Netflix to pay no more for a fatter pipe? Do I expect Netflix to throttle lower bandwidth customers to serve my 4k demands? Do I expect Netflix to pay for hardware, both ISP side and Netflix side, to serve my FIOS needs?

          To me,

          • Actually netflix is being charged multiple times for same thing.
            they pay their isp for a connection to their data centers and now the isp's want them to pay again for a connection to their customers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Krojack ( 575051 )

        You need to be all over Verizon's ass about this till it's fixed. Contact the BBB and take it public if need be. They obviously are screwing over Netflix users if other streams are fine.

        • You need to be all over Verizon's ass about this till it's fixed. Contact the BBB and take it public if need be. They obviously are screwing over Netflix users if other streams are fine.

          Not really. Once it leaves their network it's not Verizon's problem. From a customer service standpoint it is Verizon's fault.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bengie ( 1121981 )
            It hasn't left their network at that point. It's over the link that is co-owned by Verizon and Netflix, and Verizon is refusing to maintain the link. It is Verizon not providing.

            If Verizon can not manage peering relationships such that it affects the customer's ability to access other network, then Verizon should pay a 3rd party who can, like Level 3.
      • The beauty of choice. If Netflix wants to use shitty hosts while Amazon and HBO use superior ones, people will move to Amazon and HBO. This has been the way of the internet for eons. It's why things like datacenter tiers exist in the first place.
        • You do know that both HBO and Netflix use AWS, right? It has nothing to do with the hosts. It has to do with your ISP throttling the competition for their in-house streaming video service.

        • Oh yeah let me see. I could use Amazon and pay $3 for an episode of Southpark or $15 to watch a movie, one time and if I want to watch it again I pay again. Yeah thats going to work out.

          Amazon is shit compared to Netflix for anyone who is prepared to use torrents. I only use Netflix because its monthly cost per movie is insignificant and its more convenient than torrents.

          • This is exactly why I think Netflix is the content owners' best weapon against piracy. Imagine if the content owners opened their vaults to Netflix. Even if the material was from 2 years ago on, you would have tons of content to watch on Netflix. You could have a progression: Movie in theater/show on TV, DVD release, Netflix release. Each step making the show/movie more available. Would people still pirate? Sure. Some people would pirate even if you gave them official DRM-less movie downloads for 10

          • Netflix has shit selection of new movies, while Amazon has a pretty solid selection comparatively and has real blockbusters like the Marvel and Hunger Games films.

            Anyways, you want to put all your eggs in one basket? That's why you're bitching about your shitty connectivity and I'm not. The fact is that Amazon, HBO, Hulu, etc don't have the problems that Netflix is having, and that's indicative of a Netflix problem, and that's why they're paying to put CDNs inside or close to ISP networks, which is how c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alen ( 225700 )

        its fair. HD is 5mbps and 4k is around 20mbps. means netflix has to pay for more bandwidth and server storage. doesn't matter if they buy it from the ISP's or the tier 1 companies

  • Understandable. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Similiar to 1080p a few years ago, 2160p is a huge financial burden on infrastructure (assuming suitable bitrates for the resolution, and not the same bitrate as 1080p and claiming 'but it's 4k!' and charging more.)

    Something a lot of people forget in regards to 1080p/2160p is that it's not twice the bandwidth, it's four times, since it's essentially 4 1920x1080 images arranged in a square.

    That said: Who the fuck wants to stream 2160p medium? I personally haven't found benefit from 720p and given that few of

    • Bandwidth is following Moore's law and doubling every 18 months (per $), so a 4x upgrade is 3 years. Not huge. The industry needs to show constant improvement instead of just net profit extracted through monopolistic actions against customers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Bandwidth is following Moore's law and doubling every 18 months (per $), so a 4x upgrade is 3 years.

        HAHAHAHA! Oh wait...you're serious, aren't you?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        Bandwidth per $ of tech is increasing 100% every 18 months and bandwidth usage is increasing 80% every 18 months. Our bills should be going down every 18 months and our speeds going up. Stupid ISPs.

        • Is this sarcasm? Or a genuine failure to understand how basic capitalism works?

          Are you a communist? Should you be on a watch list somewhere?

          My bill goes up a dollar every 6 months, and I'm about to jump ship (negotiating with the target to prevent this kind of behavior). Would I expect my bill to drop?

          Fuck no, that isn't going to happen. Because of the basic economic system in place in the country.

          I call a guy and agree to pay X dollars for a month, and are they going to tell me I owe them less? Would

    • Has anybody actually examined the difference in bandwidth consumption(obviously Netflix has; but I was hoping for a 3rd party)?

      '4k' is four times the pixels; but your target bitrate is a different question. I doubt they'd be gutsy enough to keep it the same as for 1080p; but they could have concluded that 3 times the bitrate actually looks just fine (or, less likely but possible, that anything they can get in '4k' is more likely to have been produced at high resolution all the way from camera to final ou
      • From what I've read elsewhere, streams are roughly 15 Mbps... which is pretty pathetic. Most blurays at 1080p are anywhere from 20 Mbps to 40 Mbps. I target my 1080p rips at 15 Mbps. If you have a small screen, then that bitrate will probably suffice but on 70 inches or more, that's too low. I've got a 106 inch setup and 4k at that bitrate looks bad. I plan on testing the Netflix streams later and I'll try to get some real world results.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bengie ( 1121981 )
          Yeah, but it's going to kill my connection while buffering. When viewing 720p on my Win7 box, my 50mb connection caps out for a good 10 seconds while buffering, even at 9pm. That's for a 3mb/s average. Going to 15mb would mean 5x more data per time, so my 50mb connection could be pegged for almost a minute, assuming the same amount of time is buffered.
        • ...but on 70 inches or more...
          ...I've got a 106 inch....

          I love how talking about 4K seems to be talking about TV's.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The number of pixels is going up, but my retinas are not - quite the opposite.

        I'll probably be happy with a 100" tv at 1080p in a decade if I can still see. Hopefully by then they'll be really really cheap because everyone will be buying 16k tvs.

    • That said: Who the fuck wants to stream 2160p medium?

      Well! Maybe you only have an 80 inch screen :-/

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      4x the pixels, but much more repetition, making compression much more effective. I would rather have 15mb of 1080p than 4k. I want still images to look crystal clear.

    • I personally haven't found benefit from 720p

      You are the exception then. 720p is vastly better looking than 480p, even on a 5 inch smartphone screen.

    • If you think streaming 4k is bad, try looking at it from a post-production [filmlight.ltd.uk] point of view.

      Grading (colour-correcting) 4k on a Baselight system, in uncompressed 10-bit. That's 800 MB/s for 13 x 60 minute episodes. 37.4 TB, just for the actual footage used in the shows, let alone the rushes.

      The post industry, already squeezed to the bone, is getting killed by this pointless obsession with pixel resolution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )

      That said: Who the fuck wants to stream 2160p medium? I personally haven't found benefit from 720p and given that few of my monitors support 1080p there's no benefit to streaming at that resolution, especially given the mean quality of video entertainment available nowadays.

      There isn't a screen in my house that isn't 1080p (even tablets and phones). The difference between SD and 1080p is huge (though I expect that a good quality 720p signal probably gives 75%+ of the benefit). I wasn't an early adoptor of H

  • technophobe? moi? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    im still waiting for someone to explain to me why 4k isnt a complete fucking joke

    • Presumably, the ultimate goal of visual entertainment is to provide a scene indistinguishable from reality. Without moving his head, a person with perfect vision can resolve pixels roughly 1/7000th of his horizontal field of vision and 1/4000th of the vertical. So, as long as you don't need to see behind you, 7000x4000 is close to perfection. The current 4000x2160 is a step toward that goal appropriate to currently practical technology.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:26PM (#48134729)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The audiophiles will jump all over this though. Sure your current ISP will barely stream 1080p and service often degrades into SD, but now there's a badge on your Netflix screen that says 4k, so it must be superior quality!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're looking at this from the wrong angle. You can now stream 4K content and downscale it to ultimate quality 1080p!

    • How is a higher bitrate going to sell new TVs? Think of the poor TV manufacturers and sales people!

      I expect 4K to be over-compressed, and totally agree that the bitrate is often already too low for 1080p content.

    • 4k is just a buzzword.

      It sure is. It should be 2K or 2160p, whatever. Real 4K (4320p) is their 8K(16xHD!), and I believe there's a couple of those out, so "4K" will be obsolete very soon. Why did we let them switch over to horizontal resolution?

      • Re: 4k is a buzzword (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:45PM (#48135437)

        Video people use verticals (1080) which comes from the analog days where the vertical resolution was much easier to quantify.

        Film people use horizontals since we work with multiple aspect ratios so the vertical changes from show to show.

        Since film and tv are adopting 4k at about the same time, I guess the marketing guys chose to follow the film standard.

        • The marketing guys chose the bigger number so that they couldn't be upstaged. If they didn't do it, somebody at another company would have, and they'd look inferior by comparison.

        • Hey! Wait a minute! Film people never measured resolution in pixels until digital video came along. And your aspect ratios were determined by the lens (hell of a lot easier to change than the film gate). On film the frame size is set in stone. You're right, marketing, but it was no film standard.

      • p measures stand for "progressive", which is related to height. K measures, on the other hand, refer to width, where K means thousand pixels. In digital cinema, 4K is 4096 pixels wide, but only 3840 of those make it to consumer equipment.

        • Yes, p is for progressive, but nothing to do with height. It is opposed to "i" for interlaced, like analog TV. Both numbers are the pixels. Anyway, it turns out the whole thing was taken over by film people.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            Yes, p is for progressive, but nothing to do with height. It is opposed to "i" for interlaced, like analog TV. Both numbers are the pixels.

            Let me clarify what I meant by height: The p and i suffixes always follow a number of scanlines. 1080p means "frame is 1080 lines tall and progressive", and 1080i is "frame is 1080 lines tall, transmitted as two 540-line interlaced fields". The number of scanlines always equals the height of a picture unless the picture is column-major, which rarely happens outside portrait-oriented monitors.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

              Maybe someone can explain why broadcasters use 1080i. I can't see any obvious benefit to 1080i25 over 1080p25, for example, and the video quality is likely to be worse.

              Actually, saying Netflix 1080p is bad, it seems better than what the BBC puts out over the air or on satellite. The level of detail on broadcast HD is pathetic, on a par with YouTube. I'd say House of Cards looked better on Netflix than anything the BBC has broadcast since they cut the bitrate down a few years ago.

              • I can't see any obvious benefit to 1080i25 over 1080p25

                Because high motion. In sports, the ball may move rapidly from one field to the next. Sending 1920x540 pixel fields at 50-60 Hz allows smoother more of the motion to be transmitted, while keeping more sharpness for slower moving things than 720p would.

                Also because early HDTVs were CRT based and couldn't display a 1080-line field, though they could display a 540-line field.

      • Real 4K (4320p)

        "4K" has historically been used in digital motion picture post-production as a measure of vertical size of the frames in pixels. "4K" meant that the scanned film frames had 4K pixels horizontally, regardless of the aspect ratio (and, consequently, the vertical resolution). Sice "4320p" should presumably refer to vertical resolution, I have no idea how you managed to confuse the two together.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It sure is. It should be 2K or 2160p, whatever. Real 4K (4320p) is their 8K(16xHD!), and I believe there's a couple of those out, so "4K" will be obsolete very soon. Why did we let them switch over to horizontal resolution?

        Actually, 2K in cinema production refers to 2048x1080 video. The "K" figure refers to horizontal resolution and always has, while if you want lines, you give it with a progressive or interlaced identifier (e.g. 1080p, 720p, 1080i, 2160p).

        4K, consumer wise is 3840x2160, or 4 times 1080p to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Macrat ( 638047 )

      4k is just a buzzword.

      Maybe a buzzword for TV, but a 4k screen is really nice as a computer monitor!

  • Fair (Score:3)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@@@wayga...net> on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:26PM (#48134731) Journal

    Their ISP and storage costs will increase to handle the new format and you have to pay for that somehow.

    At least they have 4k content.

    • At least they have 4k content.

      The tiny number of people that actually care about this are just lucky Netflix isn't dumping the entire cost of developing 4K production onto them.

    • Their ISP and storage costs will increase to handle the new format and you have to pay for that somehow.

      At least they have 4k content.

      Storage space is nothing. You can fit damn near every movie created in 4k on less than a $1000 worth of hardrives off amazons.

      • You can fit damn near every movie created in 4k on less than a $1000 worth of hardrives

        Including movies shot on 35mm film and scanned from the negative at 4K?

        • 4000 x 2000 x 24 fps x 3600 sec/hr x 2 hr x 3 colors = 4.2 Tbytes, uncompressed. That's about $180 worth of hard drive per uncompressed 2 hour movie. Assuming a conservative 30:1 compression ratio, $1000 of hard drives will store 166 movies.

  • I once bought a DVD in a shop. Turned out it contained fictitious stuff that was pretty much useless by any scientific standard.
    Now I download my fairy tales through some Swedish website.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by LoRdTAW ( 99712 )

      Now I download my fairy tales through some Swedish website

      Bible stories?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It bbbbbbbbbbuurns...

      The amount of hipster/emo/goth/punk/hippie speak here burns.

  • Netflix To Charge More For 4K Video

    How much more is Comcast going to charge me? How many 4K videos can you watch with a 300Gish monthly cap?

  • Now I can fully enjoy 4k video from the totally comfortable distance of 5 feet in front of my 55" television.
    http://s3.carltonbale.com/reso... [carltonbale.com]

  • It has to be mentioned....
    So Netflix can charge more for higher bandwidth services but ISPs cannot?
    Shouldn't Netflix stream the movie, in the format I want, for the same price?

    • Netflix would be streaming a video that may take 4x the bandwidth and 4x the storage for them to keep around, so I'd be paying them to do more.

      My ISP is being paid to transfer a capped volume of data to me at as close as possible to the speed that I'm paying for. If they increase that cap or increase my max transfer rate, then we can start talking about them getting paid more as well. Otherwise, it's not an equivalent comparison.

  • Netflix officially runs on Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by kervin ( 64171 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:33PM (#48135349)

    A bit off-topic but strange, Netflix officially removed the Linux block after the release of Chrome 38 and all the NSS updates this week. And we didn't even get a Slashdot story on this.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )
      I read this on Slashdot. It's the fault of those darn Linux hobbyists working on weekends when they are done with their "real" jobs...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by crtreece ( 59298 )
      I believe there have been at least two [slashdot.org] stories [slashdot.org] about netflix support of linux clients.

  • Sure 4k might be great, but what shows, what viewing experience, will really be enhanced by this? House of Cards? I'm not sure. It's like TV stations boasting that they have the News in high-def. It's the fucking News. Some of the best high-def episodes I've seen have been on the show Nature on PBS and I imagine that the viewing experience of nature, adventure and science-fiction shows will be enhanced -- Defying Gravity [wikipedia.org] looks great up-scaled to high-def -- but other shows... eh.

    • Sports. I want to see the pitcher, the catcher, and the stitches on the baseball, all at the same time. 4k will provide a resolution of about 0.18 inch over that 60 feet. Almost good enough.

  • Maybe h.265 adoption will be sped up? (Score:3)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:48PM (#48135483) Journal

    Seems a possibility at least, it's going to buy them anywhere from 25 to 50% bandwidth reductions once adopted. Admittedly only for customers with a modern machine / software to decode it but we may see the adoption of it quicker than we saw the switch from mpeg2 to mpeg4.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SJ ( 13711 )

      You're assuming that all those baked-in h.264 de/en-coders out there are upgradeable...

      Getting critical mass on h.265 is going to take a while.

  • They charge more for BD, so why wouldn't they charge more for 4K? It's a good opportunity for them to be able to raise fees.

  • 4K on a 2K monitor (Score:3)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @06:22PM (#48135745) Journal

    I've been watching 4K on my shimian korean 2560x1440 monitor. Waiting for gaming 4K 120hz models with ati compatible gsync comes down in price.
    Even at 2560x1440 its a noticeable improvement over a 1080P blueray.

    I cant wait for netflix to offer 4k streams, even on my lower than 4k rez monitor its worth it.

  • Why don't they just add a higher tier HD service (Score:3)

    by PJ6 ( 1151747 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @06:48PM (#48135939)
    with a bitrate higher than "shitty"?

  • Works for me! (Score:3)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @07:40PM (#48136321)

    I love the idea of folks with money to burn subsidizing my subscription. Even if my rates are not directly lowered, extra income would allow Netflix to purchase better catalog and build out infrastructure. Would gladly go 720p only for further rate cut.

    • It works for me too. I know that the concept of which format is "good enought" is a very subjective matter, but in my opinion 720p is in a very good sweet spot and there is not much extra benefit in going 1080p. I mean that the jump from non-hd to 720p is a huge jump, it is the differense between a "insufferable blurry mess" and "very sharp", but the difference between 720p and 1080p is more like "very sharp" to "a tiny bit sharper". I'm not saying that 1080p is not nice, just that it is not indipensable.

      Bu

  • for watching on a Wii?

  • The only open solution to solve this bandwidth problem is TOECDN.

    http://www.toecdn.org/ [toecdn.org]

  • If I want high resolution I'll go to the movie theater. At home I usually have Netflix movies on in the background and listen more than watch.
  • nobody asked for 4k, so if you must check off the checkbox, make people who pretend they want it pay for it.

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