

Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs - edward
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26957001

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soci
I'm the founder of a startup[1] that provides paid FullHD downloads and
streams globally to 120 countries, we mainly operate in Europe and US.

Although we still serve less than 4K resolution (we've not found demand yet),
I can confirm that NONE of the things said in the article like TV set age or
contracted internet speed are in the top list of issues that we are dealing
with on a daily basis.

In our experience, what is giving us most of the headaches is the network
congestion at the time of download/stream; at weekend nights some ISPs just
can't deal with the amount of traffic that this kind of services are
demanding. We are spending quite a lot of resources in customer service for
this reason. Unfortunately, at the end the solution is always the same,
"please, try again later". Of course, this is not something people like,
specially when they have paid for the contents they intend to watch "now".

Surprisingly, people who have contracted a low speed internet connection seem
to be already aware of his connectivity limitations and are not much of a
problem. However, the ones who have good connections are not aware of the
peering agreements his provider might or might not have with other
networks[2]. Some might be even suffering from bandwidth throttling without
even knowing.

[1] [https://KiteBit.com](https://KiteBit.com)

[2] We use AWS Cloudfront CDN. We've talked with other netflix-like services,
and although they use other CDNs, they still suffer from the same problems
like us.

~~~
kapitalx
How netflix solves this:
[https://www.netflix.com/openconnect](https://www.netflix.com/openconnect)

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johnpowell
I'm pretty happy with my SD-x264 rips on a 1080P monitor served up by plex.
Comcast would put a bolt in my head if I even tried regular viewing of 4K
video.

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Sephiroth87
I wish they'll serve the 4K content even to normal HDTVs if they have enough
bandwidth, if only to get better compression than the current one, even at
1080p it's sometimes terrible...

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lvevjo
In terms of display tech, I am much more excited about OLED, which makes a
significant difference in image quality compared to what you get with the 4K
LCD TVs that are available now. Not to mention that there is very little 4K
content as of yet, though this will change soon enough.

Even when you have a TV that supports 4K (i.e. sufficient number of pixels +
HEVC decoder chip in order to use services like this), a very large screen is
needed for viewers to appreciate the higher resolution at a sane viewing
distance:

[http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-
televi...](http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-television-
graph-size.png)

The article mentions an average bitrate of ~16 Mbit/s for the streamed
content. Even with the awesome compression efficiency of HEVC, I would expect
noticeable compression artifacts with such a low bitrate. Consider that Blu-
rays (usually encoded with AVC) often have a video bitrate much higher than
that. Is this going to look any better than Blu-ray? I doubt it. Better than
Netflix's 1080p streams, though.

In any case, this is good news. The relentless march of technology continues!
Let's hope for consumer OLED 4K TVs in the near future.

~~~
DiabloD3
Blurays may be 25mbps H264 for 1080p, but Netflix is 6mbps for their highest
quality stream. Also, bitrate used by increasing the resolution but keeping
the quality the same does not scale linearly, and H265 will also improve
compression for <4k streams.

~~~
aquadrop
If they stream 1080p at 6mpbs, I doubt that streaming 4k at 16mpbs have any
sense, probably marketing dictates them to do it. You could get more quality
by increasing bitrate without any hardware hassle. Content producers spend
much effort and money to create HQ, high-bitrate picture and then you flush it
down the toilet scaling to low values. And post production for 4k image is
much more compute intensive and much more expensive.

------
aquadrop
By the way, anybody who saw real 4k in action, is it really worth it? Or
you'll need 120''\+ TV to notice the difference?

~~~
jedberg
I may be a bit biased since I work for Netflix, but I did notice a difference
when we had the 4K and 1080p next to each other.

What was really cool with the 4k is that I could get literally 2 inches from
the screen and still not see the pixels. It still looked natural even at that
distance.

~~~
johnpowell
Do you find it worth it for the massive increase in bandwidth needed? The
tracker I use haves 1080P rips that are around 10GB for a movie. Nobody ever
really downloads that. The 720P versions are way more popular. They are good
enough for people that don't buy gold HDMI cables.

~~~
emouse
People absolutely download the 1080p rips. 10GB is really not a lot with the
bandwidth and storage available today in first world countries. You're
certainly not getting into "videophile" territory when you can tell the
difference between 720p and 1080p when viewed on a 1080p display.

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izzydata
Someone needs to inform netflix that resolution is not the same thing as
quality. I understand that there are streaming limitations and you can't have
good quality downloading fast enough, but the consumers all seem to think that
4k would somehow be better than 1080p at twice the bitrate.

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fulafel
Sounds like this 15 Mbps quality would be a big improvement for 1080x1920
screens as well. But will their client software let you use it without a 4k
screen res?

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DiabloD3
I'll just wait until Chromecast supports 4k.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
This comment was downvoted as I wrote this comment:

I assume the context that downvoters are missing here is that the streaming
curretly only supports the newest TVs because only they contain the necessary
hardware to decode HEVC 4K streams.

But Chromecast is one of several dongle/boxes which separates these problems
out, so as soon as an external dongle supports 4K you'll be able to plug it in
to a last year model 4K TV, or even a non-4K TV, and be able to take advantage
of 4K streams.

There's at least one already:

[http://www.nuvola4k.com/](http://www.nuvola4k.com/)

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cheepin
How is bandwidth not going to be a huge problem. I already have periodic
problems with normal resolutions.

~~~
PeterisP
Four words: fiber to the home.

The cheapest internet package that I have available has 20mbit download, which
is more than needed for 4k streaming; and where FTTH is available, nobody
really bothers to offer DSL/etc anymore.

~~~
rasz_pl
Sure, Australians got themselves FTTH and guess what, incumbent industry think
tank helped during the planning phase by slipping some great ideas ... like
data caps :D

data caps on the internal traffic that never leaves the network

~~~
shirro
Nope. Australians lost their FTTH when they elected a new government. They are
getting upgrades to existing HFC, FTTN or wireless/satellite and the rollout
is going to be much slower and more expensive and without the speed
guarantees. Crony capitalism at its best.

------
_pmf_
Too bad that the vast majority of Netflix' content is of a quality that would
make 2006's YoutTbe blush with embarrassment.

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robinson-wall
I guess we can add Netflix to a list of companies that the BBC are happy to
provide free advertising for.

~~~
awjr
I may be ignorant but I don't know of any other UK content provider who is
providing 4K streaming content.

I think there is a massive reluctance on the part of companies to stream this
type of content. 3D TV demonstrated the need not to believe the hype and is
considered a failure. They don't want to be burnt again.

4K has a major bandwidth issue that cannot easily be overcome by national
broadcasters without sacrificing multiple channels, that is, content.

Somebody like Amazon can bring this on board without having an impact on their
business.

I recently went into Richer Sounds (hi-fi/tv specialist) and although they had
4K screens for sale, the moment you mention that the standards haven't been
sorted yet. they agree it's better waiting a couple of years.

Anecdotal evidence from my wife is that she can hardly tell the difference
between 480 and 1080p content let alone going to 4K. I think selling it to the
public is going to be hard. Harder than 3D TV.

I'm guessing you may need 4K at around the 50" screen width to begin
appreciating it.

On a side note, I do believe 4K 39" displays have a place in the workplace.
Waiting for a cheap one with a minimum 60hz refresh rate to come on the
market.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
> I don't know of any other UK content provider who is providing 4K streaming
> content.

Youtube has 4K content.

~~~
awjr
Ooh didn't know that. Now to buy a monitor that can handle it :)

