Have you ever wondered about the ins and outs of digital streaming? Niel Hunt, Chief Product Office of Netflix, has a lengthy post that takes you through the encoding for streaming process. I won’t spoil the exciting read, head on over the Netflix Blog and read it yourself.
Netflix Today we have rights to deliver about 400 streams in HD (720p). More titles will be added over time. We experimented with first-generation WMV3 encodes at 4000kbps and 5500kbps, but settled on second-generation HD encodes with VC1AP at 2600kbps and 3800kbps, which extends their accessibility down to lower home broadband connections. As with SD, encodes of film material are at 24fps, and encodes of shot-to-video material are at 30fps (or 25fps for PAL), rather than the 60fps that would come from a Blu-ray disc – we judged the 60fps content as too expensive of bandwidth for now. In general, these encodes are definitively better than SD, but won’t challenge well-executed Blu-ray encodes – that would require a bitrate out of reach for most domestic broadband today. We believe Moore’s law will drive home broadband higher and higher enabling full 1080p60 encodes in a few years.
