Re: [AFMUG] Netflix 4K video bandwidth

[Bill Prince]

This is a couple of years old, so it is probably out of date. The point is that Netflix doesn't exactly "stream" a video, but instead tries to maintain a buffer on the target device. It does this by picking an encode (at the time of the video, they say there are three encodes to choose from). It tries to maintain the highest quality it can without saturating the perceived capacity. If it can't fill the buffer, it will dynamically switch to a lower bit-rate encoding.

https://preseem.com/2018/04/netflix-behavior-wireless-network/

bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>

On 12/5/2020 1:38 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

I have seen customers recently using 12 Mbps for what appears to be a single Netflix video stream.  Anyone else seeing this?

 

I was puzzled what could be between HD at 5-6 Mbps and UHD at 15-25 Mbps?  But then I saw this:

 

https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb

 

Are these customers streaming 4K video?  And if so, does anyone know what happens if other people in the house start using bandwidth, will Netflix gracefully adjust the video quality downward to lower quality UHD or to HD?  Or will customers start watching 4K UHD and then complain their Internet sucks if other usage in the house drops the available download bandwidth to 8 or 10 Mbps?

 

And I wonder how this interacts with Netflix supposedly limiting stream rates during the pandemic to lessen the burden on Internet infrastructure.

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