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This links are also relevant:
http://techblog.netflix.com/20...
http://techblog.netflix.com/20...

Yup, it's a psychovisual model.
Like there has been used in video compression for quite some time.

There is a primary source link mentionned elsewhere in this thread.

The novelty is that these one use machine learning (SVM according to the source).

(As opposed to older psychoauditive models used in compression of MP3, Vorbis, etc. which were based on clear rule, such as "a loud beat from a drum will mask whatever was playing the main melody".
This one learns automatically based on a crowd-sourced quality evaluation)

Netflix does use AI in developing the video compression algorithm. The problem with encoding videos with lossy algorithms is that video quality is a subjective thing. You need a person to watch it and tell you how good the video quality looks. This makes it rather slow and difficult to do A/B testing, not to mention how boring it is watching the same clips over and over with different encoding.

Netflix got around the problem by using machine learning to teach a computer when video quality looked good. They had a bunch of people watch videos with different compression and rate the quality, then told the AI that their ratings were gospel. It then analyzed the different videos and decided for itself which features were associated with good quality. Once the computer was generating the video ratings as people, they had a rapid way to do A/B testing. That allowed them to optimize their compression algorithm in much less time than with using humans to rate video quality.

I'm not sure why Summary links to some popular news article which talks in general about Netflix using AI, instead of linking to the actual Netflix page describing exactly what they did. This used to be the sort of technical detail you'd expect from slashdot submissions.

I couldn't find a public "check my phone" link, or I'd've tried it.

But two of the "practices" listed in Netflix's blog post appear to conflict. One is "Up-to-date OS/software", an the other is "Not jailbroken/rooted". What does it say when the latest official system software image for a particular device is no longer supported? Does it recommend that the user trade off the "not rooted" practice to obtain "up-to-date OS" by flashing the LineageOS distribution of Android?

Netflix has an interesting video that has a blurb about small homes.

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things

The movie is more then just eliminating clutter

Minimalists don't focus on having less, less, less; rather, we focus on making room for more: more time, more passion, more experiences, more growth, more contribution, more contentment. More freedom. Clearing the clutter from life's path helps us make that room.

In the end all that matters is what the CONTENT PROVIDERS use.

They use VP9 and will use AV1 when it's finished.

You're emotional. It's clouding your judgement. Take a nap or something.

Even so, at one time you could at least rent a DVD from netflix of an "old" movie. No more.

What? Since when? I rent old movies from Netflix on DVD all the time.

http://dvd.netflix.com/

I do miss being able to buy their surplus discs though. They discontinued that program about 10 years ago.

When I see "in most cases" in reference to video streaming, I think "Netflix". Netflix says UHD video is 7 GB/hr, or 10.5 GB for a typical 1.5 hr movie; HD is 3 GB/hr, or 4.5 GB for a typical 1.5 hr movie. But you won't see an auto-switch from HD to UHD unless you're paying Netflix a premium for UHD content. And if you're watching on your phone, you can manage cellular data usage separately in your Netflix account settings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.netflix.com/title/...

I'll also add that I've seen no good data that shows that VP9 encoders perform better over a wide range of content than H.264.

Don't worry. Netflix has and YouTube has

Cosmodrome (available here if you subscribe https://www.netflix.com/title/... probably many other places if you don't) shows the Russians keeping pigs in their failed moon race rocket facility. Their leadership doesn't lose very gracefully.

25 Mbps is 22.5 gigabytes for a 2-hour movie. So you can watch 44 4K movies per month with a 1 TB cap.

All these codecs allow you to choose the bitrate, so efficiency is meaningless without a common basis for comparison. In this case it turns out they mean efficiency at the same video quality. But video quality is a completely subjective thing - how can you compare it in a reproducible manner? So I dug into how Netflix is deterministically measuring something subjective. That in itself is a pretty fascinating read.

tl;dr - they took subjective test results from showing video samples to people, then used machine learning to develop an algorithm which produced similar results.

You realize we're comparing a FREE option vs a PAID option. As a business trying to save money here/there, I'd rather go with the free one to be honest.

Additionally, the title of this post is a bit misleading for what Netflix actually found. h.265 was better than VP9 in 4K content, but when it came down to 1080p and lower resolutions, VP9 did just as good or better than h.265. 1080p will STILL rule the streaming market for the foreseeable future, so VP9 is definitely relevant here.

Quote from Netflix on their blog regarding this:

Here’s a snapshot: x265 and libvpx demonstrate superior compression performance compared to x264, with bitrate savings reaching up to 50% especially at the higher resolutions. x265 outperforms libvpx for almost all resolutions and quality metrics, but the performance gap narrows (or even reverses) at 1080p.

http://techblog.netflix.com/20...

Isn't it common knowledge that Netflix will provider servers/appliances to ISP's who request them in order to cut down on video traffic during peak hours? Why is the fact that Verizon has a few such a big deal?

This program is well known: Open Connect

The amount of Anonymous Cowards that are astroturfing and spreading FUD for Comcast in this thread is seriously concerning.

In what world is $70 a month "2x the cost" of cable Internet service? Your cable service is $35/mo? Including your modem rental? Because that's free with Google. And many people do download multiple gigabytes per day, they're called families. One kid watching youtube all day, parents watching netflix, add in some web browsing and video gaming (and your kids video game downloads for your xbox or steam) and you're easily into the multiple gigabytes per day. Netflix alone uses 1GB per hour according to Netflix!

Welcome to 2016.

See: https://ispspeedindex.netflix....

These speeds are for prime time delivery of Netflix's data for July comes in 6th at 3.47 Mbps whereas Verizon, number one, is at 3.61 Mbps. Not much difference. Some caveats here: there can be variations for data travel over intermediate connections, it's prime time. Then again, Netflix produces something like 37% of network traffic during prime time so maybe the numbers are useful.

One problem with Ookla results is that for their speed tests the data between your modem and your ISP's servers likely never leave the ISP's network. That's very unlikely to be the case for general Internet usage.

I said the figures are public. Netflix does not lose money on streaming overall, only overseas. Netflix does not make more money from DVD rentals than it does from streaming. Even the article you linked does not say streaming is not profitable for Netflix, which was your own assertion.

Maybe these are recent developments; I leave that research to you.

How can I prevent the next episode of a show from playing automatically?

I wasn't even aware of this feature. It must not be turned on for me.

Here you go: http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/S...

What if he doesn't live in the U.S?

DVD Netflix Service
 
The DVD Netflix Service is only available for customers in the U.S.
 
Please go to the Netflix home page by clicking the button below.

Here you go: http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/S...

In the vast majority of cases, I certainly agree. However, there are some instances where -- at least in a very narrow sense -- "big business" has more-or-less similar interests as the consumer. As an example, Netflix and Google both have seemingly reasonable stances on internet openness (at least in the USA). Whether you want to look at this as big business doing The Right Thing or as big business looking to lower their costs to increase their bottom line is up to you.

I almost* feel sorry for the telcos; they're sort of a necessary evil in that they don't offer anything other than a means to an end -- a required but largely thankless service. Netflix has movies, I want to watch them, and the fact that they have to go over a series of tubes to get to me isn't something I really care about or even notice, unless it doesn't work flawlessly.

*Well...actually not at all.

For something to be unlawful ("illegal") it needs to be in violation of a law or statute. There are no statutes prohibiting downloading anything. Clearly then it's not "illegal downloading."

A followup poster suggested that "Copyright law"... something something but no, downloading does not violate anyone's copyright. If it did you wouldn't be able to stream, make a temporary copy in your computer's cache, video GPU cache, etc.

Another poster suggested that the T&Cs form a contract between e.g. Netflix and the streamer which allows streaming but not downloading. This is probably the strongest argument in favor of "something wrong" but it's still not unlawful -- it's a civil contract dispute. Netflix terms are here: https://help.netflix.com/legal... and the relevant phrase is:
"You agree not to archive, download (other than through caching necessary for personal use), ...content ...obtained from or through the Netflix service without express written permission from Netflix... "

So in summary it's not unlawful. Nobody is breaking any laws. Copyright law isn't relevant here. What is relevant is a private agreement between Netflix and its subscriber, and if Netflix feels there's bee a breach of contract they can take it to arbitration (not court!) as per their same terms and conditions:
"If you are a Netflix member in the United States (including its possessions and territories), you and Netflix agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating in any way to the Netflix service, these Terms of Use and this Arbitration Agreement, shall be determined by binding arbitration or in small claims court. "

Did I mention that "downloading" is not an unlawful activity? ;)

Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ

T-Mobile's Binge on does offer free streaming (both radio and tv) for qualified rate plans. But I was under the impression that any provider could opt in or out of the program once they met the technical criteria for the reduced bitrate streams. It saves the provider bandwidth to get the stream to T-mobile, and it saves t-mobile bandwidth to get it to the customer. There's no denying any service access to T-Mobile's customers, requiring bribe money to T-Mobile in order to be included in the service, nor prioritizing any service over another as far as I can tell (but could be wrong).

Is this any different really than Netflix's Open Connect for instance? It seems to be an advantage for everyone without being a detriment to anyone.

Oh, good quote: Variety.com. Why? Why not just quote Netflix itself? https://help.netflix.com/en/no...
First, calm down. No need to get all butthurt about not having access to fiber. Second: No, I watch on a variety of devices ranging from a 1080P display down to an Android phone. Third: Video compression has evolved VERY much past 1999 DVD MPEG2 CBR streams. VBR and quantization *alone* are miles ahead of what you're talking about. Fourth: Video compression used for streaming doesn't work the same way as video file compression. How the file itself is encoded is important, but not as important as how client-server negotiation dynamically changes the stream to suit its current bandwidth conditions. Fourth: The specs quoted for HD (by netflix or variety) are WAY high. Just look at your bandwidth usage while a 1080 stream is going. No where near 5Mbps, more like 800-900 Kbps. Thats because most movies/shows are not michael Bay explosion festivals with high dynamic range and screen movement.
Even on McDonald's and Startbucks shitty throttled wifi, Netflix is watchable. True, it might be dropping to 720p, but there is NO way McDonalds is providing me with 5Mbps.
I understand the pain of shitty service, but once you discover stuff like Kodi with premium sources to fill in the gaps where Netflix can't help, you'll notice your bandwidth may not be all as bad as you think. I now only maintain a tiny number of movies in my library, and they're only ones I can't really find anywhere to stream.

https://www.netflix.com/title/...

The Netflix Open Connect Appliance takes 4U of space in the ISP's data center, space that a paying colo customer could be leasing. This is why Comcast refused the appliance, as the opportunity cost of not being able to lease the real estate to a colo customer outweighed the cost of poor quality service to its subscribers.

Indeed so. The incentive here is all on Netflix's side.

The Netflix Open Connect Appliance takes 4U of space in the ISP's data center, space that a paying colo customer could be leasing. This is why Comcast refused the appliance, as the opportunity cost of not being able to lease the real estate to a colo customer outweighed the cost of poor quality service to its subscribers.

https://help.netflix.com/en/no...
Low (0.3 GB per hour)
Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)
High (Best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)

Update: Netflix will start talking to your ISP if it has at least 5 Gbps peak traffic for Netflix. So, it's likely that your single-city ISP will qualify for a free (except for connectivity and power) appliance. Ref.: https://openconnect.netflix.co...

No not device specific but they are profile specific.

https://help.netflix.com/en/no...

Which is still much easier to deal with than changing the setting on the account each time.

Hopefully your devices have profiles support.

Afaik 4k is only available on netflix's highest plan. So its not something you are just going to get by accident.
But I suppose if you want to pay for ultra hd and watch less than SD video uou can do that too.

https://help.netflix.com/en/no...

To be honest...CloudFormation. Being able to define the entire environment in code(ish), and letting the environment self-manage and self-heal. We don't have sysads who sit at the console and manually configure things, launching servers and whatnot. In fact, in the prod VPC no on logs in to any servers. If there's a new redhat patch or something, the base image gets updated and the instances in the production environment automatically replace themselves.

Check out the Netflix Tech Blog for some ideas on how to manage an environment in a controlled, hands-off way like this. We know EXACTLY what prod looks like because its strictly defined, and we run an exact copy of the CloudFormation in dev (except for external DNS) so we can do system/integration testing.

But from a developer perspective, we're actually moving away from even having our own VMs. Now I can write all my code as Lambda or Elastic Beanstalk or Elastic MapReduce, use RDS or Dynamo as the backend. Use SMS or SQS services so I don't even need APN/GCN direct access anymore. Host all my APIs consolidated with API Gateway, shared the APIs amongst my web and mobile clients. Now I've got my entire product line and services in a scalable, easily-managed environment.

To be honest, you can probably do this in Azure with a different set of services and things, but it does seem really easy and powerful in AWS to get things going, instead of just deploying to a hosted IIS/SQLServer combo.

Yeah, I linked to the wrong incident for the first one. The second one, the teen in question did act poorly, but the shooting was an excessive use of force. Besides, the cop was stupid for pulling the teen over for brighting him. He could have just flashed the kid back and moved on with life. I'm probably also a little pumped up right now because I just got done watching Making a Murderer.

I very vaguely remembered something about this so I had to look it up. This t-mobile thing could have something to do with the Netflix Open Connect as documented on the Netflix site:

The Netflix Open Connect Initiative provides our millions of members the highest-quality viewing experience possible through efforts with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to most efficiently deliver content. We partner with hundreds of ISPs to localize substantial amounts of traffic with Open Connect Appliance deployments and have an open peering policy at our interconnection locations.

Also I found this old gizmodo article.

It wouldn't surprise me if T-Mobile and netflix simply negotiated a deal to provide one of these appliances. And/or the special t-mobile edition of said appliance uses some kind of proprietary compression algorithm optimized for mobile bandwidth.

Obviously I'm only speculating but it would explain why this can't simply be applied to any/all video sites: the Netflix content is coming directly from a t-mobile data center as opposed to an unknown caching location or across the internet. Not sure why t-mobile can't simply say as much. Maybe they think it would make the net neutrality debate/complaints that much worse or maybe there's some kind of exclusivity deal and they can't discuss it?

There already a is a way to do this. I'm pretty sure it's been available for quite a long time. Although I don't know why autoplay is on by default. Same goes for Youtube. Their's is even worse, as I can't find a way to disable it permanently. You can disable it for a session, but if you leave and come back the next day, then the setting is back on again.

I was going to say that surely you mean https://ispspeedindex.netflix.... but sadly... "ispspeedindex.netflix.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.herokuapp.com , herokuapp.com (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)"

That is really sad, not to mention bad.

While they would *love* for it to be outright impossible to copy, their goal is to make it as much a pain in the ass to copy as possible.

Let's say they didn't do any of these DRM shenanigans. You could 'wget http://netflix.com/popular_mov...' and have it run in the background at whatever speed the internet provides. You might have a 90 minute film in less than 10 minutes.

If you screen record, then that means your computer is now watching this video and unable to do anything else for the full duration of the feature. For most folks that's just too much trouble, they would just as soon wait til they want to watch it and stream it live if the computer's going to be tied up anyway.

That's the goal of all this gunk, trying to find a way to maximize inconvenience for those who want to use it in a manner they didn't want while delivering what they deem an acceptable experience. Note that a blu-ray rip of a film or series to mkv and then streaming to Kodi I find a much better experience than Netflix, and I find it frustrating that Content and the delivery channel are being linked (have to use a 'netflix' app for some things, a 'hulu' for others, etc). Basically I don't find the situation 'acceptable', but there aren't enough of me to make a difference in the market. Also so long as I have an application that lets me rip media, I can buy media and circumvent the DRM.

On the other hand, for things like Netflix, where the model is explicitly 'rental', it makes some sense. However always-online DRM for *purchased* content that restricts my choice of playback device/application annoys the piss out of me.

$9.99/mo

And Stargate and Dark Matter are included with Prime, but not with youtube or even netflix. *cough*, *cough* - you mean this Dark Matter? http://www.netflix.com/search/...

"On the Traffic and Chaos Teams at Netflix, our mission requires that we have a holistic understanding of our complex microservice architecture." ref

Find one single company that's using the cloud that has performed a single disaster recovered exercise with it.

Netflix, they continuously test their DR practices with chaos monkey.

In looking over the links, 5Mbps is recommended to receive HD content. Doesn't specify 720 or 1080, only says 720 or better. So, if you peg out a 5Mbps to get 1080p...you're at the 2.20GB/hr threshold instead of my 1.8GB/hr threshold that my 720p streams are getting. I can't find anything on exactly how much bandwith streaming a 1080p Super HD stream actually requires from Netflix..but considering that Netflix's own speed index indicates that the highest average Mbps connection currently available in the USA is 3.60Mbps, and that is supposed be more than high enough to qualify for a full 1080p Super HD stream, I'd say that 1080p actually does NOT require even 1.8GB/hr... let alone 3GB/hr.

Also, in looking at my data feed from the router more closely, the 1.8GB/hr is actually for TWO 720p streams going simultaneously. I forgot to split out the roommate's hookup data. A single active 720p stream is only reading at about 2Mbps currently.

Dude follow the goddamn thread and you'll see that 2.25 came from other people in the thread using an estimate of 5Mbps which translates to 0.625MBps. This number multiplied by 60 gets 37.5MB per hour. Multiply THAT by 60 and you have your 2250 MB per hour (Ok, so that's more like 2.20 GB per hour you can sue me for the 51 megabytes later.)

Where does that 5Mbps come from? That's the minimum recommended bandwidth Netflix recommends for 720HD streaming here.

In my day to day usage, I've found that 720p utilizes an average maximum bandwidth of roughly 4Mbps...which using the same goddamn calculations above pulls out 1.79GB per hour.

Also...I'm never going to use a 4k stream so they can fucking keep it for all I care. 1080p is MORE than what I need to enjoy a movie, and I'm perfectly happy with 720p in most instances.

Here is the citation for Netflix since you seem to think the distinction between 2.25 and 3 GB / hr is so extreme:

https://help.netflix.com/en/no...

They say 3GB, and 7 GB for new 4k streams coming. Now, where is your number from? Oh I see, your ass as you cited no source for 2.25.

youtube/netflix/etc. would be nice

I wonder if they could get Netflix onboard and have a (perhaps incomplete) Netflix cache onboard the aircraft. They've got the technology to enable ISPs to cache their content, after all. (They must have their reasons for not just using nice, cacheable HTTP to distribute encrypted blobs of their content. This is what Steam does, I believe.)

Having local CDNs would also be a huge investment

An investment that Netflix is already making. It provides an OpenConnect Appliance without charge to any qualifying ISP willing to give it colo space. Comcast didn't want to take the offer.

If movies/TV shows are sent through the internet and played on some sort of computer, there is a greater chance of piracy

Even in modern Windows operating systems that have "Protected Video Path" DRM? I'm told Netflix downgrades your stream to SD if it can't successfully establish a Protected Video Path.

Or you could see the movie.

The fact that 20 years ago it was so far behind and that many people were using commercial X's for Linux is the evidence of how badly the BSD model had failed.

You started out saying, "systems that were once free become in practice proprietary and unfree even though there is some free almost worthless version hanging out under the BSD license". Yet it served Linux fine for over 20 years, while most of the commercial Unix's died out. Your point is invalid.

At the same time the extensions into app servers like Tomcat have forked over into proprietary products. So in this case the ecosystem doesn't work.

You seem to think because a proprietary fork exists that counts as a failure. Yet Apache itself is still thriving. And hey, look, here's a blog post from 3 days ago where a huge commercial company, Netflix, describes how to tune Tomcat to take care of a problem: http://techblog.netflix.com/20...

Netflix has their cdn boxes everywhere. That's a physical presence

They transfer ownership to the ISP, so they are not owned by Netflix:

https://openconnect.netflix.co...

OCA ownership is transferred to an ISP at no charge and OCAs are fully supported by the Netflix Open Connect Engineering and Operations teams. For ISPs interested in localizing their traffic and working more closely with Netflix, we have delivery options for all sizes of ISPs, guidelines for peering and interconnection, and a collection of frequently asked questions.