Netflix Launches 'Cellular Data Controls' to Adjust Video Quality on Data-Capped Smartphones

[nburwell]

Seem like a smart move. I don't watch Netflix on my cell phone and my iPad is wifi only, so about the only time this will apply is when traveling and not having access to wifi. That happens when Hotels charge extra for wifi, so I am happy to know that this option is there.

I'm in the same boat. Even though I have the Netflix app on my iPhone, I don't even use it. If I do, it's mainly to just add a movie or TV show to 'my list.' I usually save the video consumption portion for my iPad Mini 2, which is wifi only.

But knowing the option is there in the event I'm traveling, forget my iPad, and the hotel where I'm staying charges for wifi, I can still watch Netflix without having to worry about going over my allotted data.

 

[XTheLancerX]

Well how much offline content do you need that you wouldn't be able to manage it when you had wifi available? I have a 16gb iPad and was able to sync 4 movies of standard def (which is still pretty crisp on the iPad) for an upcoming trip. When i get to my destination I'll bel able to sync a different set of movies for the ride home.

I only have 1.7GB at most at all times so that isn't very much video. Well, anything above 360p or 480p.

I still don't understand why the PIP it's hard for them to implement. That was the main reason I sold my iPad Air 2. It takes forever for them integrate such feature not only Netflix. I was excited for awhile then it wears out, because I don't see any advantage over my iPhone+ except for a much bigger display. Amazon has an option of quality of download. A movie or 2 shouldn't hurt and erase it as soon as you finished. That saves you a lot of data and if you have a crappy carrier, that saves you a lot of frustration over buffering too.

Netflix has already implemented the feature according to this guy, he made a tweak that enables the already existent code from what I've read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/4hez8t/release_netflixpip_a_tweak_that_enables/

this is not a matter of getting "the best you can", though to answer your question that's what being hooked up to wifi means. What this setting will allow you to do is hard-set the quality, because as it is now LTE and 3g are all capable of "wifi" speeds, and thus able to give you the very best quality; so long as the buffer can keep up. But do you really "want" to watch a 1080p movie on a device where 480 still looks fine when that means you are only going to be able to watch 1/2 a movie or show because you ran up against your data limit?
[doublepost=1462465690][/doublepost]

1000k THIS. It's so frustrating to have a carrier [verizon] who touts the best and fastest connections, only to be sitting at 5 bars of LTE and still have a video (netflix, hulu, youtube) sit at "buffering" every 3 seconds.

The latest verizon commercials crack me up, Rickey Gervais telling us that Verizon works just fine outsize of Kansas but I can tell you there's a whole quadrant of Northern CA where it doesn't.

Congestion. Too many people on the same site. Switching to another carrier that doesn't have as much traffic in that area or that has a denser network in the area is the only way to not suffer from this. Or, you could wait for whenever Verizon rolls in and deploys new cell sites or refarms old spectrum for LTE.

And yes these commercials are a really annoying form of business propaganda, really. Every company does it but Samsung, Verizon, and Sprint do it the worst and the most on TV from what I've seen. T-Mobile bashes the other guys sometimes as well but *usually* they're just promoting their own growth. When they say "Our network is as good as Verizon's" is a lie though. In most places now T-Mobile is pretty much on par with AT&T and Verizon but in terms of square mileage, no.. Verizon is I think around 308 million POPs covered and T-Mobile is at 304 or so. Pretty close but those last 4 million are pretty much in super sparse areas, so much more area to cover for lower POP returns.

Why not ask why Apple didn't make PIP standard, not requiring extra code. Make part of the OS. Developers don't need to add extra code for "PIP" on Mac OS x or Windows. Real OSes.

That would just be too smart

Not sure if there would be a way to do this anyway but yeah.
[doublepost=1462471317][/doublepost]

I'm in the same boat. Even though I have the Netflix app on my iPhone, I don't even use it. If I do, it's mainly to just add a movie or TV show to 'my list.' I usually save the video consumption portion for my iPad Mini 2, which is wifi only.

But knowing the option is there in the event I'm traveling, forget my iPad, and the hotel where I'm staying charges for wifi, I can still watch Netflix without having to worry about going over my allotted data.

Exact same situation here. I *occasionally* use Netflix on my phone but that's pretty much only a tiny bit on LTE every once and awhile. And I have to be extremely careful and check my usage after every episode of whatever I'm watching too, and decide when enough is enough...

 

[gotluck]

thats awesome,

I hope apple can make some kind of systemwide setting that behaves similar to tmobiles bingeon

 

[gsmornot]

I have an unlimited data plan but should I use the unlimited setting or just go with automatic? The amount of data I use is not the factor, just don't like to be wasteful in general if its not needed or I won't really see a difference.

 

[zorinlynx]

I have an unlimited data plan but should I use the unlimited setting or just go with automatic? The amount of data I use is not the factor, just don't like to be wasteful in general if its not needed or I won't really see a difference.

Depends on the device really. If you're watching on a tiny phone screen, do you really need full HD? Selecting a lower bitrate will probably use less battery power and be a more reliable stream.

Meanwhile on a cellular iPad you might want the higher resolution.

 

[redscull]

Weird that something like this wasn’t there from the beginning. Surely, it must have occurred to someone before that limiting or adjusting mobile data usage of a data-heavy app is something a lot of people care about?

Not weird. I'd wager it was very intentional. Tech savvy people that post on internet forums like this site, like you and me, prefer control and like custom settings. But their main user base will probably never need this feature, or worse, get confused by its presence and need support, or even more worse, screw themselves by upping their bandwidth usage for the increased quality (quality is easy to understand) without truly understanding the impact to their phone bill (bandwidth usage is harder for them to understand) - then blaming NetFlix after the shock.

As much as I personally applaud this feature, I am surprised it was added. If I was in charge of NetFlix, I wouldn't have green lit it. Not without some kind of iron clad contract agreement that dumb users can't blame NetFlix.

 

[_mdavenport]

You're late to the party on this one, Netflix. Offline viewing is also sorely needed, how long will that take?

 

[kwikdeth]

I wish they would enable this on all devices. I really don't need ultra HD for all my devices, just one. My girlfriend's kid ran up 450GB through their ISP cuz the cartoons he was watching on a roku hooked up to an analog TV were all buffering in ultra HD. She's got a 4K in the living room so she has to turn it on at the account level any time she wants to watch in ultraHD, otherwise they'll go through hundreds of gigs of data pointlessly.

 

[KALLT]

Not weird. I'd wager it was very intentional. Tech savvy people that post on internet forums like this site, like you and me, prefer control and like custom settings. But their main user base will probably never need this feature, or worse, get confused by its presence and need support, or even more worse, screw themselves by upping their bandwidth usage for the increased quality (quality is easy to understand) without truly understanding the impact to their phone bill (bandwidth usage is harder for them to understand) - then blaming NetFlix after the shock.

As much as I personally applaud this feature, I am surprised it was added. If I was in charge of NetFlix, I wouldn't have green lit it. Not without some kind of iron clad contract agreement that dumb users can't blame NetFlix.

Before this update, the setting was effectively ‘unlimited’. Unless you turned off mobile data for this, it could use all the data it wanted. iOS in general does not care at all about data allowances. If mobile data is not explicitly turned off, an app can download as much data as it wants.

 

[gsmornot]

Depends on the device really. If you're watching on a tiny phone screen, do you really need full HD? Selecting a lower bitrate will probably use less battery power and be a more reliable stream.

Meanwhile on a cellular iPad you might want the higher resolution.

Testing this, auto looks fine but Unlimited is noticeably better quality. Its an obvious difference but I will leave it set to auto because its good enough for my 6S Plus.

 

[rizzo41999]

I just disabled cellular usage for Netflix and HBO Now.

 

[joueboy]

Why not ask why Apple didn't make PIP standard, not requiring extra code. Make part of the OS. Developers don't need to add extra code for "PIP" on Mac OS x or Windows. Real OSes.

Yes. When iOS 9 was demoed with iPad Air 2 they showed ESPN app showing PIP. Then obviously I got the iPad Air 2 hoping that at least ESPN should be working. Well it was a long wait for me and ended up selling it. It should be a no brainer to just have it by default. But still how hard could it be to copy and paste that code for developers. Smaller companies supported the feature within a week from released. Yet you have these big companies who has a lot of money and developes like Netflix. SMH!

 

[HiRez]

This is nice, even the lowest quality (1 GB per 4 hrs) looks quite good on iPhone 6S Plus. Perviously I had to deny playback when off Wifi.

 

[JosephAW]

Problem is that sprint throttles data streaming to 1Megabit. Meaningless.

 

[macduke]

Yeah, I'd be interested in that as well. Although I will state that with the video throttling on T-Mo the video quality is still plenty sufficient for my needs. I haven't really done much Netflix that I can think of but I've used a ton of YouTube when out and about, and it works great. The fact that it doesn't apply against my data cap certainly has allowed me to use it a lot more.

I only switched to T-Mo about 4 months ago, and I'm loving how I'm paying $20/month less and I already have 16GB saved up on data stash. I haven't used wifi-hotspot yet, but that will certainly come in handy. I definitely have noticed a decrease in rural coverage (from AT&T), but so far it's been worth it.

I'm considering a switch at some point this year from Verizon. Do you have a 6s or SE? Both of those devices have LTE extended, which is supposed to provide better coverage. My wife used to travel a lot in the country to do training with parents of autistic children, so Verizon was worth the extra bills. Now she runs her own daycare so we don't really need it. Data stash sounds fantastic. Can you turn on that video throttling per device? I feel like 480p would be fine for the iPhone, but if I add an iPad to my line, I'd be really annoyed by 480p. Not that I would use it all the time, but 720p would be a lot better to deal with on a larger screen.

 

[pika2000]

I have mixed feelings about this. Although having the option is good, I rather Netflix not do this. Yeah it would suck for some people, but I think in the long run it will push demand for better quota for the dollar on limited data plans. I mean seriously, the typical data plans prices available today are not much different than years ago, and it is stifling innovation in the mobile and cloud space.

 

[vooke]

What took them this long?

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

I'm considering a switch at some point this year from Verizon. Do you have a 6s or SE? Both of those devices have LTE extended, which is supposed to provide better coverage. My wife used to travel a lot in the country to do training with parents of autistic children, so Verizon was worth the extra bills. Now she runs her own daycare so we don't really need it. Data stash sounds fantastic. Can you turn on that video throttling per device? I feel like 480p would be fine for the iPhone, but if I add an iPad to my line, I'd be really annoyed by 480p. Not that I would use it all the time, but 720p would be a lot better to deal with on a larger screen.

No I just have the 6, but yeah the 6S would help. Yeah, throttling is per device (at least on our phones, I'm not sure if iPads work differently). You can turn it on and off relatively easily (through a number and I think in the T-Mo app). I'm not sure how much it costs to add the iPad, but personally I wouldn't. It's so easy to use your iPhone as a hotspot if you ever need non-wifi data to your iPad, Mac, Apple TV... And if you want to stream video, just turn it off. I'll probably be maintaining close to 20gb of data stash (the max) most of the time (in addition to my 6GB of data), so I don't think I'll ever worry about running out.

 

[GregA]

What I need is IOS level control limiting data speed on some apps.

And .. Can an app tell if my iPad wifi is TETHERED to my iPhone? I'd like Netflix to realise that my iPad is in cellular via my iPhone. And should slow down.

 

[kiraneduconsultancy]

Seem like a smart move. I don't watch Netflix on my cell phone and my iPad is wifi only, so about the only time this will apply is when traveling and not having access to wifi. That happens when Hotels charge extra for wifi, so I am happy to know that this option is there.

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