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from the we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-DVDs dept.
Remember when you could watch Netflix videos without an internet connection? With something called "DVDs"?
Well, now you can again, and you don't even need those circular shiny things. Netflix has finally made movies and TV shows available to download, so you can watch them offline, whenever you want, wherever you are.
In IT Blogwatch, we can't decide what to binge watch first.
So what exactly is going on? Laura Roman has the background:
On Wednesday, Netflix announced and implemented...the ability to download TV and movie titles on mobile devices.
...
At no extra cost...Netflix subscribers will now be able to save select content to their iOS or Android devices, then watch on the go without the need for an internet connection. Say goodbye to...in-flight movies, Netflix is now airplane-mode compatible.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:46AM
So... For those people with phones and tablets that don't allow sd cards and have limited space, will there be offline video with sufficient quality to make it worthwhile? On my laptop I'd rather pirate stuff to watch offline anyway, fuck messing around with user agents and plugins to watch stuff on Netflix, and I'm definitely not installing any special Netflix software for what mplayer+transmission already do.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Saturday December 03 2016, @12:00PM
A one hour TV show sans-commercials ends up as a 350mb download on pirate pay. It's not 720p, but you're not watching it in a home theater, either.
I'd definitely do this and download 10 episodes at 3.5GB onto a tablet (for plane/car trips). It's not like I use the space for much of anything else.
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:51PM
With H265 a one hour show at 720p is normally below 350MB. Of course, H265 is patented out the wazoo, but if you're pirating anyway, this isn't going to matter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:09PM
That's about 4-5 years out of date; for a long time, scene releases were sized to fit neatly on CD-Rs, or for some standards, DVD-Rs, so you could fit 2x 350MB on a 700MB CD-R; 720p releases at that time were generally 1.1 GB to fit 4x in a single-layer DVD-R, or for cable shows (full hour, no ads) at 1.47GB for 3x.
Today, that sort of fixed-size rule only applies to SD XviD releases, which aren't quite dead yet, but aren't really relevant anymore. More recent x264 rules (since 2011-2012) specify constant-quality encoding, so a 1-hour show would be released in SD with a file size anywhere from 200 to 400 MB depending on content, with an average of about 270MB. The corresponding 720p release would range from about 700 MB to 1.5GB, with an average about 850MB.
I don't presently mess around with x265, but those releases are even smaller for the same quality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:54PM
That's what I was thinking. Why watch a movie on a 3"x5" screen? Unless you have perfect vision and even if you do, it's not the same experience as watching on a larger screen. Too much detail is lost unless you use a magnifying glass. I also don't get high resolution screens on small phones. What's the point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @03:40AM
That's what I was thinking. Why watch a movie on a 3"x5" screen? Unless you have perfect vision and even if you do, it's not the same experience as watching on a larger screen.
Sure, it's not the same experience. But until you can roll up a larger screen and stuff it in your pocket, there will be some people who accept "not the same experience" in exchange for "lugging less stuff".
I also don't get high resolution screens on small phones. What's the point?
Even if you can't see every pixel (and some of us can), text at the same physical size is more legible with smaller pixels. At some point it's not worth it, because higher resolution does cost money, processing power, and battery usage, but there is a real upside.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:33PM
By messing around with user agents and plugins you mean "install Chrome", right? That's all you need for Netflix on Linux these days.