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Apps Netflix finally managed to increase price š
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The OP appears to be in Scotland, so maybe they have a different system of billing there. The price in the USA is still $17.99 for the highest tier of Netflix. Hulu sometimes raises their rates twice in a single year. Pretty much every streaming service raises their price at some point...
I've always payed for Netflix via Apple/iTunes as well. When Netflix announced their price hike last year, I kept waiting for the price hike to hit on Apple's end. For me, the price didn't go up until last month -- Netflix did sent me an email alerting me to the price increase.
We're on the UHD/4 screen plan, so I was paying $15.99/month and it just went up to $17.99/month in October.
We're on the UHD/4 screen plan, so I was paying $15.99/month and it just went up to $17.99/month in October.
We were on a 4 seats for 19,53$CAN/m and it popped to 21,83$CAN/m this month. Increased for more than two dollars, I find it a bit excessive.
Remember that the higher resolutions eat more data than the lower ones. Depending on your internet plan, you could hit your data cap and get charged extra for going over.
I found 4K content nice to watch, but if you consistently watch it, you burn through a lot of data very fast.
I found 4K content nice to watch, but if you consistently watch it, you burn through a lot of data very fast.
Visually, with 4K SDR then probably not as much of a difference assuming your 4K TV does a decent job of upscaling the Netflix HD to 4K. However, if your 4K TV is capable of HDR and the Netflix video is streamed in 4K HDR, then it can be a big difference. SDR has 8-bit color for 16.7 million colors, but HDR is capable of 10-bit color for 1 billion colors. So you get better color in HDR and less color banding. And of course you get a much higher dynamic range to better see into dark area and bright areas without the image being blown out.
As far as audio, I don't think SDR can stream with Dolby Atmos audio, but HDR certainly can have it. That is another big difference, assuming your home system can play it.
Personally for me there wasn't enough in it, at the time I cancelled my subs they were pegging 4k at 15mb/s where as other 4k providers were hitting 25-30 and 30+. It was noticeable.
Though the 1080p in HDR was good.
I think I mean the 3rd Gen Apple TV, thinking back, 1st Gen wouldnāt have Netflix? I went from 1st Gen to 3rd.
The 3rd Gen launched in March 2012.
The 2nd Gen was the first with Netflix. Apple and Netflix had a special sign-up deal when the ATV2 launched in Oct 2010.
I had the 1st Gen ATV, but got the ATV2 at launch due to it having Netflix. Prior to the ATV2, I was using a Nintendo Wii to watch Netflix.
When the ATV2 launched, I cancelled my Netflix plan, and signed back up via iTunes on my new ATV2. From there, I paid for Netflix non-stop for ten year until Nov 2020, where I took a break after multiple price increases. With the highest tier, Netflix was costing me over $200 a year. Too much, imo.
I recently signed back up for Netflix, and will probably keep it until I watch the 2nd season of The Witcher, then cancel it again.
If you have a higher end, HDR capable TV then absolutely yes because some of the shows in Dolby Vision look truly incredible on an OLED TV or LCD with a high peak brightness. If you have a run of the mill TV with an average peak brightness, the difference will not be as noticeable and your TVs upscaling will probably be āgood enoughā.
Hereās an example of how good it looks IMO. I took this to show my friend the same thing:
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I was going to say something similar, but I will add that the HD content doesn't look bad at all.
Having to pay extra for 4K is kind of annoying, imo. Personally, I pay for 4K tier for the multiple streams. If it wasn't for that, I would probably just get the HD tier.
While 4K Netflix does look much better, it isn't like HD looks horrible. Also, there is a lot of content that is not in 4K, or not HDR.
Netflix bitrates are weird.
While Netflix Recommend 25Mbps for their highest tier, I have read before that the highest possible bitrate of a Netflix stream is 17.5Mbps.
For HD, they recommend 5Mbps, but it will never be above 3.5Mbps.
But, the problem when talking about Netflix bitrate and quality is that they switched how their content is encoded in the summer of 2020, most likely to ease the stress from increased demand since the lockdown. They are now using a variable encoding method that could change drastically from one scene to the next in the same movie.
For example, you could have an action movie in 4K HDR, which the big epic scenes go the full 17.5Mbps, and then drop to just a few Mbps for scenes that are slow and not a lot going on.
According to Netflix, users shouldn't notice the difference, but people are complaining.
When I was using it, there was an option to check the rate and it never went above 15, using an app sniffing the router throughput, verified it. VBR is going on elsewhere as well but when they are north of 15, it is noticeable. They bumped it to 17?
I had a theory that the recommended was down to ADSL speeds (larger market in the UK as opposed to fibre options) and headroom for the signal. That is running a few iPads or whatever at the same time.
BBC recommend 40+ mb/s for their HLG feeds and they are absolutely sublime (36 or so for the main stream). In the UK not seen it bettered on the few 4k services I have tried, live or recorded.
On a slightly related note - Last year I jumped on the introduction offer from Disney+ and subscribed (via Apple) for a whole year at 689 NOK (roughly $79). The offer expired after a few weeks, but when my subscription was auto renewed for another year this september the price was still the same! It's supposed to be 890 NOK for a whole year now in Norway.
Count yourself lucky. Here in the UK, our main (only) premium television provider, Sky, charges extra for HD! They know they can do it because they are the only ones with certain content ā mainly live sport ā but itās an absolute rip-off as the SD channels they provide are broadcast at an incredibly low bit rate with terrible picture quality.
If that isnāt insulting enough, their HD is only 1080i and their set-top box does a terrible job sometimes of displaying it and upscaling to 4K televisions. Oh, and they cram advertising into absolutely everything even on pay channels ā the new series of Succession, for example, broadcasts each episode for 1 hr 15 mins (even on-demand!) so they can stuff it full of ads!
Time to subscribe to a VPN or DNS service and check out some USA services. I'm in Canada and this is what I did.
Yup, I already have a VPN but may also try DNS as its quicker in some cases. The issue is live Golf - that's about the only sport I watch but not sure how else to get it.