Netflix Blog

I disagree.

I had 3 roommates at one point, and all 4 of us were subscribe to Netflix. It was VERY easy for us to hit the cap with everyone watching Netflix alone, let alone playing games or streaming music in the common areas.

After I moved out and got married, my wife and kid routinely have Netflix playing in the background as they sit at home during the day while I'm at work. When I go home, I usually have work to do at home as well, which only adds to the usage.

Using numbers found in the article, if you use Netflix on a daily basis for 3 hours a day watching HD content purely, it would park you at about 210GB of the 250GB cap according to Netflix themselves:

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/03/netflix-lowers-data-usage-by-23-for.html

So yes, using Netflix and Pandora can easily put you over the cap.

EDIT (for clarity): This article talks about the quality settings in the account settings area, but if you adjust the settings to allow for highest resolution, it would still apply.

Somewhat OT. What does a Netflix streamed movie consume, these days? I recall looking some months ago on their site, but I couldn't find any hard numbers (leaving the impression on me that this was on purpose).

I guess next time I watch one, I can fire up a monitor.

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EDIT: Answering myself, partially. My Google-fu is apparently a bit better, today.

This is a bit dated, but provides some figures (bless dslreports):

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-Is-1GBhr-at-HD-accurate

It also cites this link:

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html

There's probably better information, but this seems to provide enough of a ballpark for my current interest, the one caveat being any changes in the year or two since.

Netflix has actually addressed this in one of their blog posts: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html

> But when we ask them if we too would qualify for no-fee interconnect if we changed our service to upload as much data as we download -- thus filling their upstream networks and nearly doubling our total traffic -- there is an uncomfortable silence. That's because the ISP argument isn't sensible. Big ISPs aren't paying money to services like online backup that generate more upstream than downstream traffic. Data direction, in other words, has nothing to do with costs.

> in other words, moving to peer-to-peer content delivery

Netflix's blog post lays out the argument here: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/04/the-case-against-isp-tolls.html

(The relevant quote is: "(1) [Transit Networks (e.g. Cogent)] carry traffic over long distances and (2) they provide access to every network on the global Internet. When Netflix connects directly to the Comcast network, Comcast is not providing either of the services typically provided by transit networks.")

Netflix is questioning the premise of your question by suggesting that Cogent and Comcast are _not_ providing the same service. I find the argument fairly compelling, though I'd be willing to hear counter-arguments.

Netflix employee here.

I've been reading all the comments here and at Reed's blog to understand what everyone has to say about the split. Internally, we've known about the split for some time now.

Why do you think this is a terrible move? Your comment has a lot of unflattering comparisons, but doesn't explain why the move is stupid.

Also, you're probably right that DVD as a service will not last forever, and Reed understands that too (he mentions this in the post as well - http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections.html). DVD service may not last very long, but right now, it is a growing business.

The tone on this one is quite a bit different: http://blog.netflix.com/2011/10/dvds-will-be-staying-at-netflixcom.html

The email that came a few weeks ago actually had me stop what I was doing and read it (I was walking in to grab coffee, and I stopped outside to finish the email).

That message was full of excitement, and started with a proper "Dear Customers: I screwed up".

Why haven't I gotten an email this morning saying something similar? This time you really did screw up. This time, I cancalled my service

(And there is about 0 chance that I'm re-instating it)