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Netflix Admits To Capping Video Streams On Wireless Networks (variety.com)
An anonymous reader cites a story on Variety: Company says it plans to launch feature to give users control over mobile-video usage in May. Netflix has enforced a maximum limit on the quality of video streamed over AT&T and Verizon wireless networks for years, the company acknowledged Thursday. But Netflix also said it's working on a way to give users control over how much bandwidth they wish to use to access the service. The No. 1 subscription-streaming service said its default bit rate for viewing over mobile networks has been capped at 600 kilobits per second. That's 'in an effort to protect our members from overage charges when they exceed mobile-data caps,' according to a Netflix spokeswoman.
According to the article, Sprint or T-Mobile aren't limited because those ISPs don't charge customers for overage. Maybe what needs to change are Verizon and AT&T's fee structures.
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I don't see this as a bad thing. They were only doing it on providers that normally charged for data overages, so it seems likely that they were doing it for the right reasons.
It is a problem that they weren't disclosing it, but it's not a *huge* problem. This change they're making is what they should have done to begin with, but still - as a user I'm *glad* to see they were dynamically adjusting their data usage when I was on mobile. I wish more applications would do that.
They were not "deliberately degrading videos for certain customers" but rather trying to be consumer-friendly by helping customers avoid costly data cap overruns.
It would be nice however if this were a configurable option in the player right next to the cc/subtitles option; I have an unlimited plan so I'd toggle it off.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50