Data Caps Claim a Victim: Netflix Cuts Streaming Video Quality

By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica

Netflix announced last night that Canadian users will, by default, receive lower-quality?and lower-bandwidth?streaming video. The change was made to protect users, “because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed.”

Fast Internet connections could previously chew through 30-70GB of data while streaming 30 hours of Netflix video in a month. Data caps for the Rogers cable operator and for Bell Canada start at 2GB per month; cable operator Shaw starts at 15GB.

Faced with the prospect of users thinking twice before streaming anything on Netflix, the company has decided to put Canadians into a default “Good” streaming tier that will transfer only 625Kbps (which works out to 0.3GB per hour), using up 9GB a month if someone watches 30 hours of Netflix. The move is designed to keep users from exceeding their caps by accident.

The company admits that “there is some lessening of picture quality with these new settings” but insists that “the experience continues to be great.” Customers can manually switch their accounts to two higher levels of service, “Better” (0.7GB per hour) and “Best” (1GB per hour with standard definition content, 2.3GB per hour for HD content).

Netflix will continue to use adaptive streaming, which reduces the stream bit-rate in cases of congestion or low-speed connections, but this is the first time Netflix is purposely dialing back video quality and size for connections perfectly capable of handling the larger streams.

The major Canadian ISPs?Shaw, Rogers, and Bell Canada?all offer separate pay-TV services of their own. Netflix has offered its own streaming service in Canada for only eight months, and ISPs like Rogers�welcomed Netflix to the country by�lowering the data caps on some tiers. (One lower-priced tier dropped from 25GB to 15GB.)

Perhaps Canadians�really do need a “Not Safe For Canada” badge on large files after all?