Good news for Premium level subscribers on Netflix, the American company has considerably improved the visual quality of some content on its platform.
If you’ve noticed a significant improvement in the appearance of Netflix on your 4K TV recently, you’re not imagining things. Netflix has quietly rolled out a high dynamic range (HDR) upgrade specifically targeting 4K HDR titles, offering Better video quality for Premium level subscribers.
In a recent post on Netflix’s technology blog, the company detailed the completion of an update to its streaming library using a video encoding method called dynamic optimization. This improvement follows the introduction of an HDR variant of VMAF (Video Multi-method Assessment Fusion), Netflix’s video quality measurement.
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Netflix deploys even more precise HDR on compatible content
Implementing HDR-VMAF enabled Netflix to move from fixed bitrate video encoding to dynamically optimized encodings (HDR-DO) for 4K HDR video streaming. This method not only provides better quality than fixed bitrate encoding, but is also more efficient, using on average only 58% of storage space.
The main advantages of HDR-VMAF and HDR-DO are: 40% reduction in the number of rebuffers, best video quality for sessions with or without bandwidth constraints, lower initial flow, better initial quality, lower reading delayless variation in the video quality provided and less internet data usageespecially on mobile phones and tablets.
Netflix began fully upgrading the 4K HDR library using HDR-DO in the first half of 2022, and this process was recently completed last summer. Premium subscribers can now enjoyOptimized streaming of any movie or show with high dynamic range Dolby Vision or HDR10.
The update not only improves the experience on 4K TVs, but it’s also designed to improve viewing on tablets and phones that support HDR and Dolby Vision HDR. This is therefore excellent news for Premium members, especially as Netflix is increasingly increasing the prices of its subscriptions.