Netflix Canada Switches to Lower-Quality Streaming to Avoid Bandwidth Caps

[Rob71]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382738,00.asp

Netflix on Monday announced that it will switch to lower-quality video streaming for its customers in Canada in order to preserve bandwidth.

The default setting for video streaming in the country going forward will use two-thirds less data, but could result in lower picture quality, Neil Hunt, chief product officer, said in a blog post. There will be the option to switch to higher-quality streams, however.

"We made these changes because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed," Hunt wrote.

With the changes, Canadian customers can watch about 30 hours of streaming per month and consume about 9 GBytes of data. Previously users could consume up to 70GB per month if the movies were in HD, or 30GB on average, Hunt said.

"While there is some lessening of picture quality with these new settings, the experience continues to be great," he wrote.