Scroll down for the reports that this is happening. Have identical results where it goes to 540p after watching 1 video. (EDIT: This issue is specific to that addon)
(that is, if they encoded in 540p at all, because they usually only encode up to 480p for the SD resolution.)
Reports are that Chrome and Chromium are locked to SD and Firefox Vanilla and ESR without this addon can get 720p.
Confirmed with a Windows machine that it is not restricted to 480p or 540p on any browser that is up to date.
There’s something left to watch on Netflix??? Kidding. I honestly haven’t looked in a while. Only heard about different networks/studios pulling there stuff to start their own streaming platforms. Personally I think they’re naive if they think they can revive the gravy train that was cable TV by nickle and diming the so called cord cutters.
As for the resolution I honestly never took too much notice so I’m not sure what it was. Though I think I’d notice if it dropped to 480-540. Will have to pop in and check later. If so it’s just one more reason to stop procrastinating about cancelling…
You can actually check using Ctrl + Alt + Shift + D to access the debug menu Netflix has.
There used to also be a menu by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S to change the quality, but too many people found out and Netflix removed the feature to save bandwidth, so the end user can no longer select quality through the player, it’s a “fuzzy” bitrate selection in account settings.
New report: Firefox 68 and Firefox ESR 60 apparently get 720p. But this account probably only viewed 1 video, as all videos that follow would become 540p in my experience with Firefox 68. Chrome and Chromium are restricted to SD.
Edit: Okay, the issue with Firefox 68 is definitely the Netflix 1080p addon I linked in the original post.
Good example is Prime Video, only SD quality is available 1.17GB per hr, even on windows I couldn’t get FHD working on firefox or vivaldi.
Its been like this for a while now, going to cancel primevideo membership and tell em they stink!
PS. Using Pop_OS Plasma5 atm, but I did also test on ARCH (and win10). Sometimes Primevideo would say not HDCP compliant or some crap… what a load of donkey doo…
The only way we can solve this is by NOT giving them our money. Don’t continue subscriptions, and tell them why! Why should a customer care about copyright HDCP compliant nonsense? its BS!
But how can they not treat us, those that don’t pay for the right to borrow an OS on absurd terms, be treated as nothing else but 2nd class citizens?! Clearly we’re all miscreants that will try to steal their content despite paying for it!!! /sarcasm off
Joking aside, I don’t know all the details but I feel like this might be just a simple software problem that needs/will get corrected. If they accidentally shorted windows users they’d probably take the higher profit margin with them too?
The problem is mate, allot of people are simpletons and don’t even know what their watching is in SD low resolution. So that kinda compounds the issue.
If everyone was made fully aware of this problem I think we would have ALLOT more affected and pissed off people…
Well, true enough. They’ll take advantage anywhere they can. Just like the one cable company that was charging a misc service fee for essentially nothing for years. I’d get a good laugh at the Stadia early adopters if they weren’t really getting the advertised resolution while having to pay both for streaming and the games themselves…
Stadia should scale down resolution based on available bandwidth. The bigger issue is people buying games on stadia then loosing them once it shuts down (which it will),.
Well that’s true of any streaming service. I just meant that it wouldn’t be truly available even if they had the connection for it. Yeah, I don’t think it will last either. Though there’s a part of me that wants to see some good to come from it in the form of SR-IOV support in Linux and more Vulkan based games. Losing games? That would be like MS doing away with their ebooks or Amazon suddenly killing off their digital movie sales (not saying they have/will, at least not by choice…).
Anyways maybe some of this nonsense is related to stadia and other upcoming streaming services? They’re trying to rework the DRM to suit the… well suits. Google seems to want to keep stadia on chrome only. Maybe they’re trying to control access by browser/device and it unintentionally leaked? Who knows.
I just don’t understand why the DRM needs to exist to start with. If people want to record the streaming videos they can, no amount of DRM is going to stop that. Its a unnecessary layer of BS that only hurts paying customers!
