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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Netflix streaming to TV
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-02-2008 08:15 AM
Yah....in short, it sucks big time.
First off, I will make no bones that I admit a strong bias out of the starting gate as I LOATH watching movies in front of a computer display, period. But that said, this system has a lot more for you to hate about it.
Let's start with your internet service. If you have anything but the high end connections, say high-end cable broadband (not there low or even medium speeds) or fiberoptics or even T1 (no one has that at home, right), then you might as well not waste your time. No question, my DSL just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to playing these streams. And I do have the premium DSL service and my speed is, as they are fond of saying, "approximately" 3MBps (your speeds may vary). It works fine for my needs, until I try to run one of these Instant Movies. Let me put it this way -- if you didn't have epilipsy before you started watching this stuttering, halting crap, you will after about 10 minutes of it. Stick it out for another 15min and you'd better have someone close by with a pencil handy to stick in your mouth because you'll be on the floor taking a grand mal.
We know that DSL efficiency is based on the distance from the central office, and I have never run any diagnostics to see what speed I am actually getting, but I consider my setup typical. So if this is the way it works in a typical household in the field, then the instant movie service is going nowhere until service speeds increase -- we're planning on getting fiberoptic service as soon as that is available and hopefully that would solve this stuttering, jerky movement....but there are more problems.
Even if the picture were streaming without halting every 5 seconds, next comes the super amount of compression that they must be using. I mean, it's just garbage blocky -- and forget about any fast movement. Putting that aside, as if anyone could tolerate that crap, next comes the actual display parameters of brightness and contrast.
Even though the Netflix image window software is actually running on top of a virtual Windows Media Player, for some stupid reason, they have included none of the Media Player controls, so you can't adjust anything -- neither brightness nor contrast. The picture is simply WAY too dense generally in normal scenes and nearly invisible in the dark scenes, and there is nothing you can do to fix it. In short, the Netflix guys get a resounding F - and send them to dentention while we're at it.
Even if someone were mentally retarded enough to actually be inclined to watch an entire movie in front of a computer display, Netflix Instant Movie still should never have gotten off the drawing board.
I will say that I did watch one of their movies at work where we are connected via a fiberoptic infrastructure and out to the world via T1s. The flow was smoother, none of the image jerkyness and stuttering, but it was still too compressed and blocky and much too dark, like watching 35mm projection where the bulb is totally blackned all around and the reflector is all fogged. If you can put up with that kind of thing.....knock yourself out!
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 10-04-2008 12:43 AM
I purchased one of those boxes about 3 months ago and I'm pretty happy with the quality of the video. But it's on the 23" flat screen in my bedroom and I mostly use headphones for sound. As long as you have a fast internet connection, the quality is near DVD quality.
Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't havea great selection of movies in the Watch Instantly feature. A lot of older titles, a whole lot of B movies and STV titles, and a pretty good selection of TV shows. In fact, they have the current episodes of Heroes the day after it airs on NBC.
I think they may have had a break through recently with the studios because they added a bunch of high profile titles in the last week - No Country for Old Men, Deja Vu, Resident Evil: Extinction, The Santa Clause 3, Alien 3, City Hall, Meet the Robinsons, Hannah Montana 3D, We Own the Night, Across the Universe, 30 Days of Night, and others. A lot of the new stuff seems to be Disney, but there are a few Sony titles.
EDIT
Netflix recently added this section called Starz Play to the Watch Instantly section. They have a boatload of newer movies including the ones mentioned above. If you have a high speed connection, it greatly expands the service. I found it under the Genres' tab in the Watch Instantly section.
[ 10-06-2008, 05:12 AM: Message edited by: Justin Hamaker ]
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 10-27-2008 11:33 AM
It wouldn't surprise me if they are working on a Flash/Silverlight version of the "Watch Instantly" player. Right now, it uses an embedded version of Windows Media Player, which is probably why the Firefox version doesn't exist at this point.
It would surprise me if a Flash-based player wasn't in the works, because it would offer quite a bit of platform independence. The tricky part is the DRM of it all.
On a related note, Samsung just announced that their two upper-level Blu-ray players will support watching Netflix "Watch Instantly" video:
http://www.bigscreen.com/journal.php?id=1312
Here's the relevant text:
quote:
Samsung came out with a surprising firmware upgrade for its BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players this week! Both players are now capable of playing movies, television shows, and other videos streamed from Netflix, and the BD-P2550 is also able to stream music from the excellent Pandora music service.
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For those that are unaware of one or both services, Netflix offers the ability to watch movies, television shows, and other videos instantly through a streaming player on your PC or via a standalone device, such as the Roku Netflix player, a Blu-ray player from LG, and now these two players from Samsung.
While there isn't any HD content available yet, Netflix does offer a library of 12,000 titles that can be played instantly. In fact, I just used the service recently to watch an episode of CSI: New York and Survivor: Gabon that I missed because of a glitch in DirecTV's HD DVR software that doesn't like my local CBS channel for some reason.
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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.
Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 10-27-2008 08:25 PM
quote:
Netflix Rolling Out New Media Player with Mac & Firefox Support Monday
NETFLIX BEGINS ROLL-OUT OF 2ND GENERATION MEDIA PLAYER FOR INSTANT STREAMING ON WINDOWS PCs AND INTEL MACS
Based on Microsoft Silverlight, New Player Features Enhanced Dynamic Streaming, First-Time Use for Macs and Breakthrough Navigation for Fast-Forward and Rewind
LOS GATOS, Calif., October 27, 2008 – Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it has begun the deployment of Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant watching component of the Netflix service and to allow subscribers for the first time to watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.
Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.
“Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”
“Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”
Silverlight was tried and proven this summer as NBCOlympics.com streamed thousands of hours of live and on-demand online video for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
For Macintosh users, the Silverlight player will work only on Intel-based Macs, which currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.
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