Netflix is upgrading its ad-supported plan to 1080p for free

Netflix’s ad-supported plan is about to get a free upgrade.

Netflix launched its $6.99 per month “Basic with Ads” ad-supported plan last November. The concept is the same as any other streaming service that offers an ad-supported tier — subscribers get access to most of the same content but have to deal with the occasional ad when they are watching a television show or movie. However, subscribers to Netflix’s ad-supported tier have also had to deal with really crappy video quality.

At launch, the company’s $6.99 per month ad-supported tier capped the video quality at a measly 720p. While some streaming services now stream in 4K quality by default like Apple TV Plus, Netflix was short-changing its subscribers. Thankfully, the company has announced that it is finally bumping up the quality for subscribers on this tier.

In the company’s Q1 2023 letter to investors, Netflix revealed that it will be bumping the video quality of its $6.99 per month tier to 1080p. In addition, it will increase the number of simultaneous streams from one to two streams. According to the company, its Basic with Ads plan already brings in more revenue than its Standard plan — impressive growth for a new tier that has only been around for five months.

Netflix says that Basic with Ads customers in Canada and Spain will get the bump to 1080p and more streams starting today and that the feature upgrades will roll out to all markets by the end of this month. It’s good to see Netflix addressing this video quality issue because limiting users to 720p in 2023 is just ridiculous.

The news comes on the same day that the company announced that it is shutting down its DVD delivery service, which is how Netflix began, 25 years after it started.