Following shelter-at-home orders, more people today are subscribed to Netflix than ever. Even so, a new study by American-based data analytics company, JD Power (via Bloomberg), finds that Netflix viewers are facing the least number of service problems than viewers of other streaming platforms.
The report, which surveyed 1,232 U.S. adults in late April, states that Netflix subscribers ran into about 0.7 streaming glitches per hour watched — followed by Hulu and Amazon Prime Video’s score of 0.11. Disney+ and Google’s YouTube TV, both of which are relatively new services, landed on the 4th and 5th spots at 0.12 and 0.13 respectively.
Under lockdown, it was expected streaming services would bear the heaviest brunt of the increased internet traffic. However, JD Power says they performed fairly well in the research.
To allay the network overload worries, nearly all of the streamers including YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix had agreed to restrict bandwidth and streaming quality in select European regions and India. Those restrictions are now gradually being lifted, too.
Netflix’s figures are especially remarkable given how rapidly it’s gaining new subscribers. Earlier in April, the company announced about 16 million people signed up for its service in the first quarter — more than double the 7.2 million that was expected. “While our productions are largely paused around the world, we benefit from a large pipeline of content that was either complete and ready for launch or in post-production when filming stopped,” it wrote in a letter to shareholders.
Further, J.D. Power found that the American sitcom The Office was pushed to third place by two of Netflix’s original productions, Ozark and Tiger King. While The Office has always been Netflix’s most prized possession and still is its all-time most-watched show, it’s slated to leave for NBC’s own forthcoming streaming platform, Peacock.
Netflix’s hit documentary series Tiger King was streamed for at least two minutes by 64 million households in its first four weeks of release and is headed for a follow-up TV series which will reportedly star Nicholas Cage.
What’s more, when asked which platform would they pick if they could only have access to one, the majority of the survey’s respondents went with Netflix.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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