Netflix streaming quality - Page 7

The reason I got interested in streaming was when the Miami UCF football game was blacked out. I could not buy tickets even at scalper price of $120 and although ESPN2 gameday had it in all areas of the US it was blacked out and Kentucky was substituted. All of the bars were mad also.

I went on the net and found a feed from Justin TV and got the game. Problem was that half of my little laptop screen had the game and the other half was filled with senseless gibbrish from idiotic bloggers commenting on the play or the coach etc. I was glad to get the game and I guess some ameture was streaming it to the net from timbucktu.

Moral....I want what I want when I want it. I don't mind paying for it but if the technology is there, I don't want to go all over hells half acre to get some thing mediocre. My mail man and I are not on speaking terms (he is so lazy that when ever something other than advertizing is delivered, he leaves me a note to pick up my package at the post office) So I don't think a mail delivery service will work. (This sort of reminds me of the Columbia Record Club of the 1970 's where you would get records and they would send you stuff unless you told them not to send and they never seemed to receive the cancel post card).

I am sure the technology is out there to deliver HD content but the Movie company's, hardware manufacturers, media providers etc probably conspire to try to prevernt piracy and therefore deliver crap to their customers.

In the long run I think they will be cutting their throat

generallee...

the hd streaming on netflix is quite good, assuming you have the bandwidth to support it... i find it more than acceptable on a 60" plasma... titles are somewhat limited right now, but i believe that will change in the (somewhat near) future as more bandwidth becomes available (keep in mind that netflix itself only has "x" amount of bandwidth on their end too)... however, the quality of what is there is darn good (regardless of what one poster might be saying)...

fwiw, the sd streaming is pretty acceptable as well (although there are some transfers that are simply horrid)... especially if you have decent video processing somewhere in your chain...

as far as streaming games, for college games, depending on your isp, there are several available on espn360 each week... i don't know what the blackout rules are on that though (probably the same as espn gameday)... if it's blacked out, it's blacked out...

as far as nfl games, unless you are a directv subscriber, there's no legal way of doing it...

Thanks for your reply. NFL isn't the problem. I have had Dolphin season tickets for 42 years but gave my seats to my daughter and bought D*. since I moved out of the area. Now I just watch on local TV or go eat wings and drink beer at a local sports bar.

I did not want to buy a PS3 for blu ray because I don't play games so xbox and WII don't interest me. When I saw Blu Ray Players like the Samsung and LG that did streaming I thought maybe that was the way to go. But then that would be a waste.

I have a Tosh HD DVD that is good enough to upscale old DVD's so the only thing I am missing is Blu Ray but if that is going to be passe soon like my Tosh do I just wait. Bandwidth is something else. Road Runner Lite downloads at 750 kb sec and standard at 7000 kb sc (7 mg?) so from what I have read should be sufficient and if not then there is turbo (what ever that is).

my laptop has 1 mg of video ram and 6mg of RAM and a 2.53 intel core duo processor. I have read something about Draft N which is supported by my wireless adapter but I have been told that I really don't need a dual channel router. It seems that I have plenty of computing horse power for the job.

Since this is a new computer, I am not sure what the blu ray stuff is all about but there is some type of boot technology that allows me to run the computer for streaming and other applications without loading the operating system. I guess this technology is to increase speed and throughput for things like games and streaming. I hav.e a ton of stuff to learn.

Thanks for your help in trying to understand

as many have said, streaming and hard media can co-exist very well, and likely will for awhile...

well, i don't think blu-ray is going anywhere soon... so i wouldn't hold back on buying a blu-ray player (i personally use the oppo bdp-83)...

you cannot stream hd from netflix via computer, and will unlikely be able to do so anytime soon...

i can't help with the computer stuff... sorry... try the htpc threads...

BTW This helps a lot

Close W7MC
open in Silverlight/IE
CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-S
Manual 1500 (was choosing 500)

Go back into W7MC and it will also now use 1500

Not awesome HD but watchable when you just want to watch something.

Do you know how easy it is to record OTA? Instead of working against us they should provide "network tv" streaming with commercials in HD. A 10Mbit stream 1Mbit commercial (use the time for buffering) can look awesome.

OK I get the point but I still don't understand DIVX and what is it used for? I probably need to go buy a Dummies book.
I did go to HULU and tried one of their Clint Eastwood movies. The movie was OK but not HD.

I am not interested in watching a lot of the Hollywood trash that the idiots are shoving out from the movie studio's and I think that most will aree with me and not waste your bucks.

wikipedia is your friend...

divx... what's it used for? primarily stolen media...

you shouldn't presume that "most will agree with you"... it may be "in style" to trash hollywood, but the movie studios make many fine movies...

You are correct.....there are many good movies.....but if one looks at the reviews there are far more C's and D's than A's.

It's been said here many times that you can't stream HD content to a PC. What about the quality of the SD material that is streamed to the PC versus SD to a device like Roku? Any experiences out there?

Jack

The SD quality seems okay. I watch about 100 streams in the 1.5 years or so between the start of Netflix streaming and the advent of the first embedded device; my PC is connected to the same 46" 1080p LCD monitor that my other A/V and gaming equipment is hooked up to. The quality on PC is nothing to write home about, but it's smooth enough.

It uses an earlier version of Silverlight which is supposed to move to a lower quality encoding if connection speed goes down and back to a better quality one seamlessly, but I've seen it pause for a couple of seconds.

Mike,

Sorry to be so insistent but I'm not sure you answered my question. Is the PC SD quality as good as one of the non-PC Netflix streaming devices for SD material? I know how good the PC quality is because I am doing it. I'm trying to decide if I should invest in a device like Roku.

Jack

jack...

i use the roku box... ime, sd quality seems to be the same as on a pc, but i can't say that definitively, as i only tried it on a pc a few times... probably would have done it more had it been mac-friendly at the beginning, as i only fire up my pc when absolutely necessary... my only real issues with sd are the occasional crappy transfer, but those seem to be getting less frequent as time goes on...

that being said, imo the roku box (or other solutions) are "worth it" for the hd alone... granted, the selection isn't as extensive as i'd like it to be, but i would expect that to change in due time...

and that's ignoring the other goodies that the roku box gets you...

ymmv...

i've been streaming to a pc for about a year and just started using my ps3 to stream..

i really don't see a difference between the picture quality. some stuff looks great on both and some looks pretty bad. i think it just depends on the material.

so no, i wouldn't invest in any new equipment just to get a better picture.

i've watched movies on justin.tv in blue ray, HD, H.264 and the blue ray is really awsume on their site

now I don't understand why netflix is so awful streaming movies

I used my PS3 with disk and it's good with the HD movies but all the others are really terrible and they have the nerve to ask me my opinion on an old movie which wasn't HD I refused to give a reply

why can't they just stream HD quality movies or even better blue ray movies ?

No such thing as "streaming Blu-ray". You could rip the contents of a Blu-ray disc and attempt to stream that, but pretty much all of it would be too thick to stream over any common network connection.

Netflix wants to be accessible to a wide audience with a wide range of network connections, so their highest quality encoding only requires a connection of around 6 Mbps (which means that the peaks can't exceed that). Their lowest quality encoding, which we all would consider to be unwatchable poor, can be streamed to a connection whose speed is measured at .6 Mbps.

It seems probable to me that there are also constraints dictated by their agreements with studios, who have an interest in keeping their Blu-ray sales alive.

On a side note...

Remember some of the naysayers talking about how Netflix stock may have peaked at the high 40s just a couple of months ago, and how streaming was going to pull them down, etc, etc....


It looks like the stock may break $60 today! They are rocking, and adding streaming to more and more devices.

And yet a large portion of their customers have watched at least15 minutes of streaming video, 15 MINUTES! I got my netflix disc the other day and all I could watch was around 15 minutes, then shut it off.

I also noticed the selection was poor. I thought they had 17 thousand titles to stream then I noticed they count every episode of every show. Example the Pink panther cartoons there are around 60 of them at about 5 minutes long each. They count those as separate items which is how they get to the 17 thousand. Very poor indeed.

I've literally watched days of material through Watch Now. There are some excellent selections there.

Legend of the Seeker Season 2 is available now! It looks like they are putting them up on Netflix in HD the week after they air on TV.

http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Legen...0&trkid=438381

I will have to check this one out.

I'd suggest starting with Season 1 :
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Legen...0&trkid=438381

All 22 episodes are available in HD, and it looks great.

It is a series in the same vein as Hercules or Xena, but less campy. In fact it is produced by Sam Raimi, the same guy who did those shows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/ar...on/26barn.html

Fantastic! Im a big Herc and Xena fan. Didn't know this existed! Just started watching a few minutes ago. THANKS! Do they still make this show?

I finally got a chance to activate my PS3 Netflix BD this morning. I'm pretty impressed so far. When streaming HD the PQ is pretty darn good, maybe just a hair less than my Cox HD channels. Streaming SD is okay, not great but certainly watchable on my 50" Panasonic plasma. Bit rates varied from 4.5-6 mbs. I'll definitely be buying another streaming device for the bedroom.

That is unfortunate for you. From what I have read here, most of the folks who have received and use the PS3 disc have enjoyed the service. Based on their current streaming fueled growth, that seems to be the norm.

Netflix streaming is very popular with consumers and investors. Indeed, NFLX has now broken $60.

They are growing by leaps and bounds because people are enjoying the streaming service. I know I am... OK... just queued up Legend of the Seeker Season 2!

Look like analysts are finally getting the full impact of Netflix's unique offering.

There is also buzz about them being purchased by Apple... although that would be counter to Apple's history of tying their software to proprietary hardware (Netflix streaming is doing well with lots of hardware partners).


http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderd...TB-18998.html?

Yes, they do! Season 2 just started! And Netflix is carrying it as the episodes air (a week later, though).

Anyone watched Ep 2 of Season 2 yet? I tried today and there seemed to be a big problem with the audio.

Confusing! Why can't I get Netflix HD streaming through my PC? Plus some Netflix enabled Blu Ray players support Netflix HD streaming and some don't???? What a mess. Is there an authoritative source of info for this? I sure didn't see much on Netflix help. This sounds like a recipe for a public relations disaster to me. I would sell that stock while it is still high if this isn't simplified soon. This reminds me of the horrible Rhapsody-To-Go service (I am now a happy Zune Pass user).

^^^

oh come on... it's hardly rocket science...

Well, where do I get clear info on which devices support HD streaming and which don't?