Netflix promises films & series in the best 4K quality – but most watch on your PC in a lower resolution. Only with the right setting can you get the best possible picture quality – this makes the movie night much more fun.
If you want to watch a film or series on Netflix, you naturally want to stream it in the highest resolution. After all, Netflix even advertises that it offers its premium customers selected content in high-resolution 4K.
The big but: Even if you have a premium subscription, you don’t automatically watch all films and series in 4K. On the one hand, not all content is available in high resolution, and on the other hand, Netflix throttles the quality in the two major browsers Chrome and Firefox to a measly 720p.
If you watch Netflix frequently on your PC, you should therefore check how high the picture quality actually is. Here are two tricks to help you find out, and tools you can use to improve Netflix quality on PC.
Show playback quality in Netflix: Here’s how
If you want to know how good the Netflix playback quality is, you can start the browser application and enter “test patterns” in the search field. As a result, you will be shown a series, the episodes of which play different test images. If you start any episode, you can see the current playback quality at the top right of the screen.
If you want to know how good the playback quality is for certain films or series, start them and then hold down the buttons [Strg] + [Umschalt] + [Alt] + [D] pressed – Netflix will then show you the current video resolution along with lots of other information.
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How to improve the playback quality in Netflix
If you watch Netflix in Chrome or Firefox, films and series are displayed in 720p quality at most, the lowest HD resolution.
The picture only gets better with the free Netflix 1080p browser extensions for Google Chrome and Firefox, which at least display Netflix in Full HD quality, which is also the optimum for most monitors. Cool: Because the add-on works across platforms, it is not limited to Windows. So you can also enjoy Netflix in 1080p on Linux.
How it works? The add-on modifies the browser’s browser ID in such a way that Netflix assumes that your browser can play videos with a 1080p resolution. Once installed, you only have to clear your browser cache, reopen Netflix and start a series episode or movie once. The video will now play in 1080p in the browser window, which you can check using the keyboard shortcut presented above.
Maximum 4K resolution: how to get the most out of it
If you already use a 4K monitor, you can even enjoy Netflix on the computer in maximum quality. This works if you use the supplied Microsoft Edge under Windows Start or on the Mac the Safari browser. Of course, you need a Netflix premium account.
If you have it, we recommend that you don’t use Netflix directly in your browser, but rather the Use Netflix Windows 10/11 app. In contrast to Chrome and Firefox, you get the maximum possible resolution by default and do not need any additional extensions.
Finally fix annoying Netflix restriction
Especially in the browser, Netflix often does not deliver the best streaming quality – and has for years. A problem that Netflix itself has so far skilfully ignored, so users have to use additional tools to help themselves.
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