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They can optimize for lower bitrates, which they've been doing for a while, but the recent drop in bitrate is really awful.

https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/netflix-degrading-hd-v...

Even if they are bandwidth constrained, I wouldn't be surprised if some shows looked better at 480i/.5Mbps than 1080p/.5Mbps.

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Yes, and it's very frustrating too: they lowered the bitrate when Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Breton said the internet would not support the extra load due to work-from-home/COVID. Breton was CEO of Orange, internet & 4G provider. This is all sounds very suspicious, and it was clearly wrong. Some of us pay for UHD quality and we don't get what we initially paid for.

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