In these times of crisis, with people in most countries being isolated or working from home, the use of streaming services like Netflix of course has spread.
Even to the point that authorities fear that transferring the huge data required for movies and TV series will bring the internet down.
Therefore, the European Commission simply asked Netflix to lower the image quality to reduce the amount of data.
On Wednesday, one can read a tweet from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton in which he said he had discussed with Netflix CEO Red Hastings and asked Netflix to refrain from streaming video content in HD in order to “secure internet access for all”.
Important phone conversation with Tweet embed, CEO of Tweet embed
to be defeated #covid19we #staying at home
Remote work and live streaming help a lot but infrastructures can come under strain.
To secure internet access for everyone, let’s #SwitchToStandard definition when HD is not necessary.
– Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) March 18, 2020
And yesterday, Netflix announced that it intends to fulfill the wishes of Europe.
“Following talks between Commissioner Thierry Breton and Reed Hastings – and in light of the extraordinary challenges posed by the coronavirus – Netflix has decided to reduce the bitrate of all streaming content in Europe for the next 30 days,” a Netflix spokesperson wrote. a Send an email to Business Insider.
According to Netflix, lower image quality will mean a 25 percent reduction in the total amount of data.
One hour of high quality Netflix content consumes 3 GB of data, and the same SD quality content only consumes 1 GB.