Netflix’s New Compression Strategy
To do that, Netflix will transcode every one of their videos a bazillion times at different resolutions and at different bitrates, finally selecting the smallest one for a particular title that doesn’t suck visually. Seriously, their algorithm for all of this is quite clever.
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But can Apple and Amazon sell 1080p videos — averaging about 5000 Kbps now — at bitrates as low as 2000 Kbps — less than half that average size — without a perceived loss of value?
Update (2015-12-31): Nick Heer:
I don’t see why they couldn’t. From my experiences with a non-technical crowd, they don’t care about video bitrate, likely because video isn’t marketed on bitrate but size.
However, the file sizes are clearly visible in iTunes, however.
