need2sleep

Since when is it ok to publish this without a single shred of evidence to support the dude's claims?

Laughable to say the least.

Dude probably got owned locally.

Looks dope, but not usable over Tor.

Requests to the API are returned with a 403 code.

Indeed.

This is hardly a legitimate statistics, how many sites sit behind CloudFlare/Sucuri/Incapsula IP's, which are always nginx reverse proxies.

I don't think anything changed that much as of late, apart from more and more people adopting CloudFlare.

I'm no videophile, but Netflix et al. are absolutely horrendous compared to any legitimate DVD or Blu-ray release.

You can even do an A/B test, they'd without a doubt prefer the Blu-ray version in case of HD.

Yeah, Netflix is notorious for cringeworthy bitrates, you shouldn't look up to them. :-)

In a perfect world, streaming services should thrive to provide the same quality as their retail counterparts, or even better in this age. Technology allows it.

But the sad reality is that Netflix's 1080p is just 5800, whereas a Blu-ray usually has at least 20000, going to >35000 even. Consumers are basically ripped off in this situation, because the quality is sacrificed sometimes even up to 90%, making even TV a more viable viewing choice.

That's understandable.

But you can't offer HD with a bitrate that's too low even for proper SD. There are simply too many compression artifacts.

I for one would not subscribe to an HD (streaming) plan if my connection wasn't good enough for it. Your problem here is that you're trying to have both sub. plans work for all users, which you can't do without being dishonest about it.

Maybe just offer a download option for HD with proper bitrates? Then even the lowest connections can make use of it, because the download doesn't have to be streamable.

Why are the bitrates so painfully low? 720p has a whooping 840Kbps and the best 1080p stream is just 6000Kbps.

Your streams are way too over-compressed IMO.