Netflix fans warned to stop watching on app immediately as you could be making a big mistake
Netflix has made a bit of a habit of chopping up its pricing plans and offering loads of different tiers in the last couple of years.
One of the outcomes of this is different plans have access to different levels of video quality on the streaming platform, with only the most expensive Premium tier getting access to 4K video, for example.
If you often watch Netflix on a laptop or any other device using either Chrome or Firefox as your browser, though, you won't even be getting 1080p, it turns out.
Advert
An interesting (but very geeky) Medium post from tech expert Daniel Kim has explained this problem nice and simply - it's all about piracy fears.
Basically, Netflix is constantly anxious about people recording content from its library and illegally sharing it. This is why you may have noticed you're not able to take screenshots or recordings of Netflix on your phone at all - you just get a black screenshot instead.
While browsers like Microsoft Edge and Safari have tools that let Netflix prevent this sort of copying, it turns out that Chrome and Firefox have a lower level of protection for the website.
This is why Netflix has seemingly taken the step to limit video quality to just 720p when you're streaming through these two popular browsers.
That doesn't stop people from being able to record their shows and movies, in theory, but it does mean that they won't be able to do so in the most pristine quality possible, at least.
It's a pretty understandable approach, given that Kim names some alternative options - including adding ugly watermarks as you watch, which most people probably wouldn't want.
So, this all means you could quite easily find yourself in a situation where you're shelling out extra cash a month for the most expensive tier of Netflix and expecting stunning 4K video, but you're actually limited to a much grainier 720p at no fault of your own.
The solution for now seems to be to change how you watch things to avoid Chrome or Firefox - which might mean downloading Edge or Safari.
If that isn't an option, you might want to make sure you're on a cheaper plan - since there's no point paying for 4K if you're not actually going to get it.