Netflix is making its $6.99 per month ad-supported plan a much better value. The company is upping the video quality from 720p to 1080p and will let subscribers watch two streams at once, Netflix said in its Q1 2023 letter to investors. Subscribers in Canada and Spain will get the improved features starting today and be available in all 12 of the markets where the company offers its ads plan sometime this month.

Netflix says it is “pleased” with the progress of Basic with Ads, which launched in November, and notes that its total average revenue per membership in the US for the ads plan already exceeds that of the standard plan. It also says that recent licensing deals mean the ads tier now offers “on average ~95 percent content parity globally (by viewing)” of the no-ads plans, which sounds like it addresses one of my key complaints with the ads plan when I tried it at launch.

It’s nice to see that Netflix is improving its most affordable tier, especially so soon after Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would be charging more for 4K with its new Max service. On Tuesday, Netflix also announced that it would delay the broad launch of its password-sharing crackdown to Q2 and shut down its DVD-shipping service.