Tag: video quality

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Netflix boosts ad tier with 1080p quality, two simultaneous streams in Canada

Netflix rolled out its cheaper, ad-supported ‘Standard with ads’ tier roughly five months ago. Now the streaming giant is making some significant changes that will improve the value of the plan.

As spotted by The Verge, Netflix laid out the changes in its Q1 2023 letter to investors. The streamer will bump video quality on the ad tier from 720p to 1080p. Moreover, it will let subscribers watch two streams at once. The letter notes the changes will go into effect in Canada and Spain immediately and will eventually come to all 12 markets where it offers the ad tier later this month.

The Netflix website already lists the video quality change to Standard with ads tier on the plan comparison page. Interestingly, this makes Standard with ads a significantly better option than Netflix’s $9.99 ‘Basic’ tier that still locks content to 720p. Basic does offer some features that Standard with ads doesn’t, like the ability to download content to watch offline.

Along with the changes to Standard with ads, Netflix said it was “pleased” with the performance of its “per-member advertising economics” and notes that engagement on the ads tier is “above our initial expectations.”

So far, Netflix says it hasn’t seen many people switching from Standard or Premium to ad plans. Moreover, the company says Standard with ads now has, on average, roughly 95 percent content parity globally with ads-free plans. Netflix says its ads plan already has a total average revenue per membership (ARM) — from subscriptions and ads combined — that’s “greater than our standard plan,” which is part of why it’s increasing the video quality.

During the Q1 2023 earnings results, Netflix also said it was “pleased with the results” of paid sharing in Canada and other markets and will expand the program to the U.S. in June. Read more about that here.

Source: Netflix Via: The Verge

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Google Messages beta gets Photos link to send videos without quality loss

If you’re enrolled in the Google Messages beta, you may soon see a few new updates appear in the Messages app.

As spotted by 9to5Google, people running the latest beta version of Messages (specifically, ‘messages.android_20220128_02_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic’) should see a new prompt to “Share videos as they’re meant to be seen.” I was also able to access these features on both a Pixel 4 and Pixel 6 running the Messages beta.

The prompt encourages users to connect their Google account to leverage Google Photos links to share videos and “preserve sharp video clarity.” Tapping the ‘How it works’ text reveals the following message:

“Your Google Account powers features such as Google Photos link sharing in Messages without accessing your conversations. Messages still send from your phone number.”

The text implies that connecting a Google Account powers other features in Messages, but it’s not entirely clear what those are. Finally, at the bottom, there’s an option to continue with your account or use Messages without an account.

Like other Google-made Android apps, the change adds your Google Account profile picture to the search bar at the top of the app. Users can tap the profile picture to change their account or access settings.

Further, the new Photos link feature adds a new ‘Google Photos’ section in Messages’ settings where users can toggle where to send videos or images via Photos links instead of through the SMS or MMS standard. The settings menu notes that enabling these settings will allow Messages to upload to Google Photos.

My initial impressions are that this change is an overly complex way to fix a long-running problem with SMS and MMS protocols reducing the quality of media sent using the standard. You could always get around that problem by generating a Google Photos link and sending that — this change appears to streamlines that process. However, in my experience using Google Photos links, less tech-savvy users would rather I just send the low-quality image rather than deal with opening Google Photos links.

The new Messages update also introduces a navigation drawer with quick access to your Messages inbox, starred messages, archived messages, spam and blocked messages, and more.

Source: 9to5Google

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Video quality on Twitter is getting a crisp update

Videos in your Twitter feed should now look a lot less crunchy, according to a recent tweet from the microblogging platform’s support account.

The tweet claims that videos uploaded to Twitter “will appear less pixelated,” thanks to a new update aimed at improving video quality.

According to reporting by The Verge, the improvement in question involved axing a “pre-processing step” that “split videos into smaller chunks” in the upload process.

Apparently, this step sometimes reduced the quality of the final posted video.

This announcement is the latest in a slew of new features and updates from Twitter this month.

In September 2021 alone, the social media platform has introduced the following changes so far:

September 1st: Twitter debuts ‘Super Follows’, a paid subscription service for users who want to monetize their tweets via a paywall
September 1st: Twitter opens beta-testing for auto-block setting called ‘Safety Mode’
September 2nd: Twitter teases an in-development privacy setting that lets you hide old tweets
September 7th: Twitter starts testing full-screen ‘edge-to-edge’ display on iOS
September 8th: Twitter lets users cull their Followers list with new ‘Remove this follower’ button
September 8th: Twitter launches out moderated invite-only groups called ‘Communities’
September 9th: Twitter rolls out out emoji reactions for Turkish users only
September 10th: Twitter tests bot-identifying labels
September 23rd: Twitter introduces an upcoming trigger warning feature called ‘Heads Up’
September 23rd: Twitter expands its ‘Tips’ payment options to include Bitcoin, teases forthcoming NFT authentication

Source: The Verge