I bought my mom Netflix but her laptop isn't handling it well. Is there a way you can stream H264 instead of VP9 from Netflix?
💀
@matrix
Can't decide whether the laptop is bad, or whether Netflix is a piece of shit streaming service that needlessly consumes resources because they can't optimize shit.
@alyx Both, it's a low power Celeron and doesn't have hardware decoding for VP8, 9 and H265.
Follow
@matrix
I assumed no hardware decoding, but even in software, you'd have to have both a low-end and old CPU to not be able to decode a normal stream. I remember software decoding fullhd torrents back in the single core AMD days. When I'd have problems was if there were massive spikes in bitrate. So I can only assume Netflix wastes bandwith like crazy.
@alyx I don't think it does. Streaming companies do everything they can to not waste bandwidth. I think that VP9 along with bloated JS is just that expensive.