How to manually lower Netflix's streaming bit rate

True story. Last night, while on an Amtrak train from Chicago to Detroit, I was trying to pass the time by watching Netflix on my laptop. Just one problem: The connectivity wasn't great between cities, so there were a lot of pauses while the stream buffered.

What I needed was a way to downshift Netflix, to make it buffer at a lower bit rate. Yes, that would lower the image quality at the same time, but at least it would be more likely to play smoothly.

As it happens, you can indeed change Netflix's buffer rate on the fly, while you're using the desktop (i.e. browser-based) player.

All you do is press Alt-Shift and then left-click in the player window. In the pop-up Diagnostics menu that appears, click Stream Manager.

Next, click the Manual Selection box, then try lowering the bit rate a few notches. Click Apply and you should have fewer pauses in the playback. If not, try lowering it a bit further still.

This method can also help if your ISP saddles you with a particularly restrictive bandwidth cap. If you typically go over your data limit each month, lower the bit rate. (You can make a more permanent change by venturing into your Netflix account settings and choosing Manage Video Quality, though you don't get nearly as many choices here.)

Granted, not many people will need to monkey with these kinds of settings, but if you're not blessed with high-speed Internet or you need to keep a close eye on that data cap, it's nice to know these settings are so readily accessible.

IT energy consumption lower than previously claimed

The average Briton spends only about 0.5% of their daily energy consumption on internet services, including everything from accessing the datacentre to using mobile devices, a study has found, debunking the myth that surging demand for consumer IT is hurting the environment.
A previous study, carried out earlier this year by the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), summarised that access networks, not datacentres, are the biggest threat to the sustainability of cloud services. “This is because more people are accessing cloud services via wireless networks, and these networks are inherently energy inef?cient,” the study stated.

Datacentres are only part of a much larger cloud computing ecosystem. The network itself, and speci?cally the ?nal link between telecommunications infrastructure and user device, is “by far the dominant and most concerning drain on energy in the entire cloud system,” according to the CEET study.
“Our energy calculations show that by 2015, wireless cloud will consume up to 43TWh (terawatt hours), compared with only 9.2TWh in 2012 – an increase of 460%,” it stated.
This means an increase in carbon footprint from six megatonnes of CO2 in 2012 to up to 30 megatonnes of CO2 in 2015.
However, more recent research by industry body ESP KTN has debunked this myth. It found that households are actually using far less energy to maintain their digital lifestyles than originally thought.
The research assessed the energy cost of internet mediated transactions, such as downloading an album from iTunes or streaming a film.

The network, and speci?cally the ?nal link between telecommunications infrastructure and user device, is by far the dominant and most concerning drain on energy in the entire cloud system
CEET study

“Energy consumed in networks is utterly inconsequential to the energy consumed at the datacentre and the energy consumed in the home (for general cloud services),” wrote the ESP KTN study’s authors, Paul Krause and Kate Craig-Wood.
When looking at UK users’ daily carbon use, the average home broadband usage is 23GB per month, which equates to 2,000Wh (watt hour) per day based on the laptop user model. The average Briton consumes 195,000Wh per day of energy, and there are on average 2.3 people per household, so online activities account for perhaps 0.5% of our total energy footprint.
“The energy of our online lives is inconsequential compared to the great benefits to society,” wrote Krause and Craig-Wood.
Craig-Wood conducted this research as part of her PhD looking at cloud computing in relation to climate change. She said the study has clearly demonstrated that IT is not the enemy.
“A typical Briton spends 0.5% of their daily energy consumption on internet services, including everything from the datacentre to the laptop. Given that ICT is expected to save 16% of societal emissions by 2020 and the sector already contributes 10% to GDP, the climate impact of our industry is clearly not a significant concern at this stage," she said.
The study found that energy consumed in transferring data from a regional datacentre to a user is 1592Wh/GB.
“This is significantly lower than earlier published estimates, but this difference can be accounted for by efficiency gains over the last seven years,” said Krause.

Online activities account for perhaps 0.5% of our total energy footprint
ESP KTN study

“We are seeing a massive growth in the use of wireless networks for music and video streaming and downloading. But this is replacing the purchase and use of physical media, which is a much more energy-intensive activity,” he added.
As the consumer appetite for digital content grows, commentators have expressed fears about the environmental impact this surging demand for media consumption is creating, both in housing this data in datacentres – for example, Facebook alone handles 300 million photo uploads per day – as well as in consuming this data through cloud services via mobile devices.

But on the contrary, households are using less energy as digital content consumption grows, the latest study has shown.

Lower uptake of cloud, ICT limiting medium-sized enterprises' productivity: CEBR

Research from CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) has shown that the productivity of medium-sized enterprises in the UK is lagging behind that of large businesses, because of lower adoption of technological tools,

But cloud can help them plug this gap, CEBR added.

The study, Adoption of ICT and cloud services by medium-sized businesses in the UK, France and the Netherlands by CEBR and cloud platform provider Cordys found that medium-sized enterprises generated £1,518 less per worker than a large enterprise.

According to CEBR, performance of medium-sized enterprises (between 50 and 250 employees)  in all three countries has taken a knock as a result of the financial recession. A comparison of productivity growth between medium-sized and large enterprises revealed that medium-sized enterprises have “suffered disproportionately more”.

“This is particularly the case in the UK and France where large enterprises have seen productivity rise by an average of 1.1 percentage points more per year than medium-sized enterprises,” according to CEBR.

The study attributed this lag to 18% lower ICT adoption by medium-sized enterprises in the UK.

Data from the European Commission (EC) showed that medium-sized enterprises' productivity in the UK declined by a significant 4.8% per year since 2008.

They demonstrated a structurally lower take-up of a range of different ICT-based activities compared with their larger counterparts, the study showed.

For example, 84% of large enterprises in the UK have adopted intra-company data sharing solutions, compared with only 66% of medium-sized enterprises, pointing to a lack of technology integration.

This gap was reflected across the board, including supplier-related processes (54% versus 34%); selling online (42% versus 28%); CRM (customer relationship management) applications (44% versus 29%); and ERP (enterprise resource planning) software (48% versus 24%).

In part, the productivity gap is explained by less agile and efficient business processes in medium-sized enterprises, which burdens them with additional costs and time-intensive processes, said CEBR’s senior economist, Shehan Mohamed.

Between the three countries, the UK medium-sized enterprises saw the sharpest productivity decline (1.7% more than larger businesses between 2007 and 2011) than elsewhere in Europe.

France saw a difference of 0.5% and Dutch medium-sized enterprises actually performed 1.4% better than the large firms.

This is partly explained by increased use of a range of ICT activities with French and Dutch medium-sized enterprises, the analyst firm estimated.

But this is not all – CEBR found that, in 2012, UK medium-sized enterprises had higher mobile internet adoption rates than France and the Netherlands, with around 80% using mobile email and 73% using mobile internet browsing.

But UK medium-sized enterprises’ use of mobile tools for strategic business purposes, such as document sharing or using business software apps, was significantly lower.

The report examined how cloud computing can help medium-sized enterprises to address this productivity gap. ICT activities can be implemented through the cloud, in turn making medium-sized enterprises more competitive.

The analyst firm outlined three benefits that medium-sized enterprises can yield with cloud adoption: cost savings, business development and new opportunities.

Cloud can help medium-sized enterprises eliminate their server and storage costs, cutting capital expenses (capex) and asset management costs and CEBR suggested that the implementation of a private cloud environment would lead to a 17.3% reduction in total IT capex, with a public cloud leading to a bigger reduction (39.9%).

Migrating to the cloud means that there’s also a reduced need for power and cooling, with CEBR suggesting a 44% reduction in energy costs in a private cloud and a 79% saving in the public cloud.

Cloud’s scalability features can help medium-sized enterprises better manage seasonal peaks, increasing output by 0.1% per year. In other words, this would increase the output of an average medium-sized enterprises by €21,528 (£18,605) in the UK.

Lastly, cloud adoption – and the subsequent lowering of the barrier to entry – will see the creation 35,000 new medium-sized enterprises in the UK.

"We see this in the market every day," said Art Landro, chief executive officer (CEO) at Cordys. “Medium-sized enterprises want to adopt enterprise applications like their larger counterparts, but find it tough to implement and support the required infrastructure and gain the same benefits as their larger competitors.

“However, solutions which previously would have come with off-putting upfront costs and slow deployment times are now available in the cloud in pre-packaged or custom solutions, underpinned by a business process platform as a service (PaaS).

“This enables medium-sized enterprises to take advantage of the benefits of a customised enterprise solution at a much lower cost. With this approach, they can combine cloud and on-premise systems in the same way that enterprises can,” Landro said.