Netflix streaming quality - Page 77

The PS3 definitely has problems with the Netflix application. It was pretty much flawless until a little less than a year ago but now I can rarely even get any HD streams, it's mostly low/sd and med/sd which are unwatchable. On rare occasions it will ramp all the way to x-high/hd but only very rarely. I have a Roku box twelve inches from the PS3 that plays the same titles in HD without fail. I have also streamed the same movies on Vudu through the same PS3 and they stream in HDX (1080p) without a hitch. I've spoken to PS3 customer service twice and Netflix customer service three times but nothing has improved the situation. I don't even get better results when I run it with a wired connection. I don't even bother trying Netflix on the PS3 anymore.

Anyone watch Netflix on their kindle fire yet? and if so does it seam to play fast?

Someone just reported on that here, in the "Amazon Prime Instant Video" thread.

My PC still has problems with smooth startup of any Netflix video. It takes anywhere from two to five minutes for the choppy video to catch up with the audio. Once it does everything is fine. I have NF streaming on a PS3 and a Samsung BR player and neither of those have any of the problem. Seems like this should have been corrected by now. Is there a software update I might be missing?

Yes just put it on my wifes Kindle works fine so far. But she has only watched one TV show todate.

I have not had any such issues with Netflix on my ps3. I get X-high on all streams wirelessly with Fios

Untick "Allow HD" on the pop-up bar.

I have found stream quality to be better from Netflix than iTunes- which surprised me. I expected more from Apple.
That said neither can beat a Blu ray.
I recently started catching up on Mad Men. I picked up the first season on Blu and then noticed Netflix has all the seasons- so i compared image quality in hopes to avoid the hassle of buying and re-selling on Amazon.
Well- while the netflix quality is passable on it's own....it's when you pop in the blu ray....WOW. IMO- it's more than enough of a reason to watch it live in HD or get the blu.

But that's the problem.
Most joe six p's only see the Netflix stream. It's instant and it's good enough.
They have no idea what they're missing.... or worse just don't care.

I don't have an x-box 360. I asked my family for a Roku for x-mas, so I'll have to wait for HD to become available I guess. It's hard for me to watch anything that isn't in HD, but I really like the idea of free (well, included) on-demand from Netflix. Sometimes I turn on DirectTv and I can't find anything I want to watch on my 150 or so channels.
We are a spoiled society, aren't we?

You should check out msgohan's comparison pictures thread here. He has the same frame of various titles from various services at various resolutions. Nothing's as good as BD, but the Netflix stuff compares surprisingly well.

It also depends on your device. The op mentions "watch it live in HD" being better but 1080p Netflix on my PS3 blows that away. Not as good as Blu-ray, but certainly better than broadcast, at least on my setup and with my provider (Fios).

Of course he doesn't say what device he's using, which is part of the problem with vague "PQ isn't that great" posts: it very much depends on a lot of factors such as ISP speeds and which device they're using (especially with so few 1080p capable devices out there). I know 720p on the Xbox looks like crap compared to the 1080p I get on the PS3 (for example)

Of course Netflix is not going to be anywhere near BD quality. Even VUDU which has the best streaming quality available is not as good as a BD. But many people would probably not notice the difference. But VUDU also has much better quality than Netflix too.

I put together some links to some of msgohan's frame caps for comparison in this post (open the spoiler--sadly, the Lost BD image would seem to be lost ). I chose these because they contain human faces, which have an abundance of tiny details to compare. You can see that the Netflix 1080p images are visibly softer, but not as much as you might think, considering that they're encoded at 4.8 Mbps, versus the high bit rate of the BD encoding (the Outbreak BD is encoded at 15 Mbps, according to its page at blu-raystats.com, and that's at the low end of BD bit rates).

Outbreak is the only comparison in that post with a link to a capture from the VUDU version--it's impressive how close to the sharpness of the BD the 2-out-of-3-bar VUDU HDX image is. Of course, it costs $5 to see the VUDU HDX version of the movie .

Why is it worse to not care? I do care about PQ, but it is not reasonable for me (Joe Six-Pack) to purchase the blu-ray version of a series for which 98% of the enjoyment concerns the plot elements and intrigue of the story. I see it as a difference in preferences and priorities, neither is right or wrong in a global sense.

On the other hand, I would never pay $5 to watch Outbreak on VUDU when I can buy the blu-ray disc right now for $8. (I'm not going to do either, just an example.)

It all comes down to economies of scale, doesn't it?

Or just rent the BD at no extra charge if you have a Netflix or Blockbuster rent-by-mail plan. A film as old as Outbreak is sure to be "Available Now" and you can have it in a couple of days. The only reason to rent the VUDU stream is if you're searching for something to watch now and you settle on that.

The other option is to get the Blu-ray from Redbox for $1.50

How many titles can be found in a Redbox kiosk? Is a BD of Outbreak likely to be one of them?

EDIT: I looked it--600 discs with 70-200 titles seems to be the consensus.

Mine is still dropping frames at x-high with the PS3. My fiend see the same thing. We both have FIOS. It was flawless until that mandatory software update Netflix made us do a few months back. Really annoying

Thank you, that worked. Can you explain that function and why is it there?

I was trying to stream the TV show "Glades" tonight and it wouldn't work. The screen showed "cannot be viewed at this time" or something like that. What would cause this? Thanks.

Network Jam? I'd imagine T-day traffic was pretty high.

I had no problems around here streaming Netflix yesterday.

It was just that show that wouldn't work. I tried a couple other things right away and they both worked. Anyway, I'll see if that show works tonight.

I had a similar problem about 30 minutes into a film. Retried several times and it finally worked and played to the end. Probably too much demand on the server (it hit at just about 9 PM).

When ticked it will buffer and show the program in HD, nobody knows why but it causes audio sync problems. My guess is Silverlight is the problem because the same program works fine on a set top box.

Anyone having an issue connecting to streaming services with their Sony blu-ray players tonight? I have the BDP-S770 and it has always streamed flawlessly until the last couple of weeks when it has started to display the "connection error" message. Fortunately after repeated attempts I've been able to get it to work, that is until tonight. None of the streaming services (Amazon, Netflix, etc) will work. I've attempted the typical trouble-shooting--turn off/on, unplug for several minutes ... nothing has worked. The "Internet Status" on the 770 shows as 100% and running "Network Diagnostics" only states that my connection is working. This leads me to believe that the problem is perhaps related to an issue with the Sony servers.

I was using my Sony TV with Netflix yesterday around 7PM CST with no issues.

I have had this issue past few weeks. Seems to cleared up Saturday 12/3 but its been driving me crazy.

FYI - Less than a year after I excitedly (without knowing what I didn't know) purchased an LG Blu-ray player with Netflix streaming capability I have canceled my Netflix streaming subscription. WHY?:

1. No closed captioning (i.e., optional subtitles) - I use this feature when watching all english-language DVD's since it greatly helps with comprehension (espcially on British, Australian...movies). I ended up watching most English language movies on my PC or iPad (vs. a 55" HDTV!) since these do support this feature.
2. No 5.1 sound.
3. Poor to, at best, merely OK picture quality. The average DVD's (or HD CATV content) picture quality is so superior to that from Netflix it isn't even close. A large percentage of the content was essentially unwatchable.
4. Limited choices - I only watch movies (no TV shows) and blew through everything that I wanted to see in about 6 months - that's never happened with DVD's. Sure more content is appearing everyday, but not at any rate that allows me to use the feature regularly.

I know that closed captioning & 5.1 sound is not a problem that rests solely with Netflix (i.e., some devices do support these), though I could get no indication from LG (or Vizio since I was considering one of their TV's w/ streaming) when these features would be added (they gave some response like "When Netflix allows us to add this"). It is unclear to me what Netflix is saying/doing about all this.

Either way, given the high bar that Blu-ray HD sound encodings have set (which are dramatically better than 5.1 sound) along the marginal picture quality of Netflix streaming I was almost feeling like I was watching VCR's rather than what my HT was designed for.

So for now this much bally-hoo'd streaming evolution is, for me, a bust which appears to be a long way from becoming a viable alternative to physical DVD's. I know the change will happen, but when?

^ 5 minutes of research would have clued you into that. Sorry, buy you bought the wrong device. Should've bought a 1080p/5.1 device.

In other words:

1. You bought the wrong device for closed captioning
2. You bought the wrong device for 5.1 sound
3. You bought the wrong device for 1080p and are only seeing 720p (or have other issues such as a slow ISP). Quality isn't Blu-ray (obviously) but in my case, it's better than my cable provider in most cases.
4. Choices are a matter of opinion. I've burned through 400 titles over a couple years, and still have dozens in my instant queue. Obviously YMMV depending on what you are interested in.

If you think it was VHS quality as your post implies you were doing something wrong (wrong device, slow connection, wrong configuration). You could have come here for advice, and we'd have helped you out (or you could have spent less than $100 for a Roku 2 and enjoyed the higher quality 1080p streams and 5.1 sound). Honestly , you should probably should just stick with Blu-ray.