Streaming video traffic increase from Level3?

["Frank Bulk" <frnkblk () iname com>]

This evening I saw a quadruple increase in traffic volume from Level3
address space, a one-third increase in peak streaming video usage overall,
and when I did a few checks with our netflow tool, it looks like customers
that were streaming Netflix content just days before are now getting it out
of Level3 space rather than our local cache or our upstream provider's
Netflix cache. We also exceeded our previous peak usage by 12%.

Did something change with Netflix that would have resulted in greater usage?
Did Netflix defaults change so that customers are now using HD, or a
higher-rate bitrate HD?

Frank