DISNEY+ fans are in uproar over a little-known “downgrade” to their subscription when they stream shows from a PC or laptop.
Customers have taken to social media to warn other subscribers that they might not actually be getting the quality they’re paying for.
The Premium package, for £10.99 per month or £109.90 per year, is the only plan that lets viewers watch in 4K UHD and HDR quality.
This is what gives shows and movies their crisp picture.
Disney+’s other packages, Standard with Ads and Standard, only offer 1080p picture quality.
Yet customers might not be receiving 4K or 1080p picture quality, depending on the device they’re streaming on.
Full 4k HD and 1080p streaming is supported on most TVs.
But it is not supported on web browsers like Chrome, Edge and Firefox, where the maximum video quality is 720p.
“I just signed [up for] a Disney+ sub to watch the new Ahsoka series. I got an awful surprise when I loaded up the episode and it was extremely blurry, 720p clearly,” one customer wrote on Reddit.
In a separate post, another subscriber wrote: “What a huge downgrade! 720p?? You got to be kidding me!!!”
Streaming rival Netflix also restricts video stream quality on Chrome and Firefox, over fears of people pirating shows and movies, tech expert Daniel Kim explained in a Medium post.
In technical speak, it comes down to something called digital rights management (DRM), which essentially protects things from being copied.
Chrome and Firefox have a software-based DRM, but they don’t support hardware-based DRM.
If Disney+ and Netflix allowed for 4k HD or 1080p streams in a browser, thousands of hours worth of TV and film could be ripped off by a screen recording application.
So both companies have reduced the streaming quality on a browser to protect themselves somewhat.
There is a workaround, however, if you have an Apple Macbook.
Apple’s Safari browser app can support 1080p for streaming, but unfortunately not 4K.
Microsoft Edge also used to support 1080p, but this has since changed.
Here’s what Sean Keach, The Sun’s Head of Technology and Science, thinks…
It’s no secret that TV streaming apps are costing more and more.
Not only are prices shooting up, but we find ourselves asked to pay for an increasing number of apps and services.
And when you combine those TV bills with your music streaming, mobile and internet fees, and every other drain on your bank account, it all starts to get a bit much.
One of the best ways to cut your TV bills is to simply cancel all of your streaming subscriptions and only sign up to one per month.
Pick an app like Netflix, Disney+, or Apple TV+ and smash through all of the content you want to watch on that app.
Then the next month, swap to something else.
And once you’ve done them all, you can cycle back to the start again.
It’s an easy way to avoid forking out for a rolling library of streaming apps with more content than you could possibly watch.
Also don’t forget that paid-for streaming isn’t the only game in town.
There are loads of apps that don’t cost a penny to enjoy, and downloading a few will unlock thousands of live TV channels plus tens of thousands of movies and shows.
Try apps like Tubi, Amazon Freevee, The Roku Channel, Plex, and Pluto TV to get some ad-supported television without having to pay any monthly fees.
