They’d rather spend money on marketing than servers. Tech savvy Bay Area residents gobble up bandwidth, as greedy telecoms refuse to maintain infrastructure. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have to deal with some of the worst Internet service imaginable. Not everyone has excellent Internet access. Taking a cue from Apple, they default to the least frustrating settings.

The slow download may not be Netflix’s fault, but most users will blame them. Users tend to take out their frustrations on others. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting hours for a download to finish. If you’re using an iPhone, you may be using cellular data or a slow, public, Wi-Fi hotspot. The end-user’s bandwidth is also important. ^ top Adjust Netflix Video Quality to Save Data You can also set video quality settings for your profile on the Netflix website. Streaming quality, for cellular connections only, is set on the Cellular Data Usage screen. Of course, this is just the setting for downloads. Despite the smartphone’s impressive Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion, Netflix still defaults to standard video quality. This is a screenshot of the latest Netflix version installed on a brand new iPhone 13 Pro Max. The lesser video quality is noticeable, but it can be changed easily. Unfortunately, when I installed the Netflix app, download quality was set to SD. It features 2048 x 1536 resolution, which is beyond HD quality. If you own an iPad, you will likely notice a difference. Most people won’t even notice the difference on a 6.7″ or smaller screen. Since HD costs Netflix more money (servers and bandwidth are not free), Netflix defaults to SD. Thus, HD is superfluous on most iOS devices.

The biggest screen on an iOS device is 6.7” - a feature of the iPhone 14 Pro Max and similar devices. iOS devices are portable and most have small screens.

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