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Max users grandfathered into $15.99 ad-free plan lose 4K, HDR next month
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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I don't think there should be a 4k tier. They should be tiered on ads and number of users. Why should quality be a tier?
If they separate all the features and charge for each of them, then money!
So as with all the other races to oblivion in our economy, ~~sanctioned encouraged~~ private shareholder mandated insatiable greed did it. Same with microtransactions in videogames, "upgrades" to check luggage and reasonably sized seats in airlines, shrinking portions in food service, etc.
Higher cost, lower quality, always. Murica 🤑
The cost of storing and serving 4k content is much, much higher than 1080p.
The cost of storing and serving 1080p is much, much higher than not storing or serving any content yet they still do that. It's what we're paying them for. Furthermore 'streaming 4k' is pretty compressed already and comes nowhere near the level of bitrate of a 4k bluray.
Not really. I mean there is, but both bandwidth and storage get cheaper by the day. Delivering 4k content today is probably an order of magnitude cheaper per bit than delivering HD content was a decade ago.
I would say that was a valid argument a decade ago when 4k came out. I'm completely baffled that we STILL market 1080 as high quality. Furthermore, I would say that was a valid argument if these fucks weren't taking in record profits over and over and over again. It's not a cost issue. It's a greed issue.
Storing is done once by simply offering a 4k option*.
Bandwidth is an ongoing cost per view, but no where near the increased plan cost to cover it.
*technically more than once because of distributed CDNs which would need to scale to demand. But negligible.
I mean they cache it all via CDN. In some cases that means they've got 1000 copies of a popular show sitting on CDNs around the world, and in some cases that means they are dynamically pushing content to CDNs on demand.
Because it costs more to stream 4k content than lower quality content?
Not agreeing with it, but the justification is easy to make.
It costs inconsequentially more to host large files, sure, but the cost is usually on the consumer vis-à-vis their ISP to stream larger files.
You are wording this like you are disagreeing, while still agreeing with what I said.
I strongly agree with this. In fact, just seek out a college level textbook. Here's a free one. Its like having a secret decoder ring to a huge chunk of society you interact with daily. You'll be able to quickly identify an advertising pitch, and identify why its appealing to you and if it is deceptive. You'll also see the gaps as in "okay product A exists and product C exist, so product B probably does too. Now why am I not seeing that one?". It also lets you see that you are sorted into a specific bucket because of your age, race, level of education, income, and geography. There are huge parts of marketing that you don't see because those are for other market segments which you aren't in.
Its like have a cheat code to society.