Despite the lower price point of the ad-supported Standard plan that Netflix offers, subscribers deal with a fair bit of other compromises besides just the ads. This includes having their streams limited to 720p, as well as only having one device supported at a time for streaming and downloading. Though it looks like these concessions will be going away sometime this month, according to the streaming company’s Q1 2023 letter to investors.
On page five of the document, Netflix says that it will be upgrading the “feature set of our ads plan to include 1080p versus 720p video quality and two concurrent streams in all 12 ad markets”. This will start with Canada and Spain, with other applicable markets getting the upgrade within the month.
Downloads were not mentioned as part of this upgrade, which likely means that Netflix is still not offering that for its Standard with ads plan. Beyond that, shows that are off-limits to the ad-supported plan will likely remain off-limits as well.
With that being said, one can argue that the ad-supported plan is superior to the more expensive Basic plan. Despite being pricier, Netflix still restricts the streaming quality of the Basic plan to 720p, with only one supported device at a time. On the flip side, there are no restricted shows, and downloads are still an option. Which makes it sting a little to know that Malaysia is not among the 12 ad markets. But for what it’s worth, we did get a price cut for said Basic plan back in February.
(Source: Netflix [PDF])
