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Posted Sat 07 April 2012

Manually Set Netflix Streaming Bitrate

I stream Netflix to an HTPC I have setup. Depending on what I am watching, I sometimes want to manually tweak the quality of the streaming beyond Netflix's automatic detection--for example, some videos playing in full HD overwhelm the machine's ability to decode the video, causing stuttering. Alternatively, I may want to force HD for some videos.

There is a built-in but not easy to find way to do this. While watching the video (not fullscreen), press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+s. This will bring up an option to manually set the bitrate. Note that doing this will turn off Netflix's automatic detection for the current video, so for example if your network connection slows down, you may see stuttering and/or buffering.

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