Facebook, Instagram and Netflix reduce video quality

Coronavirus: Facebook, Instagram dan Netflix mengurangi kualitas video

The main streaming services and social networks began to reduce the quality of videos in the face of peak usage during the Covid-19 pandemic. Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV +, Facebook, Instagram and Globoplay will have playback automatically adjusted to reduce network traffic. The measures aim to prevent the increase in demand for streaming from impacting the Internet infrastructure and hampering activities such as home office and online classes.

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Only changes in the Rede Globo service and on YouTube have immediate consequences for Brazilians. The actions of foreign companies are beginning to take effect first in Europe and the United Kingdom, where governments have already adopted massive quarantine due to the new coronavirus.

1 of 1 Netflix and other streaming services reduce transmission quality during the Covid-19 pandemic – Photo: Lucas Mendes / dnetc

Netflix and other streaming services reduce transmission quality during the Covid-19 pandemic – Photo: Lucas Mendes / dnetc

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Netflix was the first to announce the measure. Videos from the European catalog are reduced in bit rate, which reduces the amount of information transmitted on the network and worsens the quality of images without necessarily changing the resolution of films and series. According to the company, the change will be valid for 30 days and should reduce data consumption by about 25% in the period.

A similar solution was adopted by Amazon and Apple on their respective streaming platforms. Facebook also followed suit: videos from Facebook Watch and Instagram will be streamed at a lower bit rate. For now, companies do not set a deadline for normalizing reproduction.

See also: Home office: see tools for working at home on coronavirus

Home office: see tools for working at home on coronavirus

Home office: see tools for working at home on coronavirus

YouTube, on the other hand, decided to play videos in standard definition (SD), lower quality than HD and Full HD. The adjustment, which is also valid for one month, does not prevent users from changing the setting manually. According to a note from Google, the measure started in the European Union, but has been expanded to the entire world. Despite this, tests conducted by the dnetc in Spain show that the Google platform continues to play Full HD content automatically.

In Brazil, Globoplay and services like Globoesporte.com, GShow and Globosat Play adopt a mixture of the two types of measures. Higher resolutions like 4K and Full HD (1080p) are temporarily suspended, making HD (720p) the maximum definition for live and on-demand content. There is also a decrease in the bit rate around 50%: a 60-minute soap opera chapter, for example, goes from 2.5 Gb to 1.2 Gb of data consumption.