Netflix streaming quality - Page 83

I agree with you about Starz. I don't watch Starz movies. I cannot say enough good things about the 1080p Netflix streaming with my new Pan. 220 Blu-ray player. SUPERB!!

Well of course we all know that broadcast doesn't support 1080p. I didn't say it did. Also important to remember that most people here watch everything at 1080 (either p or i depending on their set) and upscaled. I would hope that most people here could recognize the extra crispness, but you never know.

Watched a few clips using my PS3 yesterday. I had my video processor set to 1080P and my TV is a Samsung LED RPTV 67" set. The picture was really good. For those using PS3 what setting do you use to output 1080P? My video processor scales any input from the PS3 to 1080P. Does Netflix download an HD stream and the PS3 scales it to 1080P?

I'll just point out the difference between Netflix on my xbox (720p) and my PS3 (1080p) is like night and day.

I don't know how the xbox compares to other 720p players though, but there's a pretty big difference to my eyes.

If you see XD-High, then PS3 is getting 1080P from Netflix, no scaling. I've never seen any setting for that.

EDIT: Sorry, meant to say X-High HD. Thanks mproper.

I've seen HD on many of the listings but not HD-High. Does this show in some kind of PS3 pop-up that shows stream statistics or is in the Netflix listing?

It goes low/medium/high SD, then medium/high/x-high HD. There is no xd-high. If you see x-high, that's the best it gets.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you're asking. On the listings, they will only be listed as HD. While you're playing it on the PS3 though, you can bring up an overlay that will tell you the actual quality you are getting. Not sure what button it is on the controller, but I have it mapped to the "info" button on my Harmony (guess it would depend on your remote). It should look like this (click for larger version).

It's DISPLAY on a PS3 remote, SEL on a pad.

Tonight I noticed that the Netflix interface on my Pan. 220 was not showing which movies were in HD, and which ones were in 5.1 surround. Is this just a Netflix glitch, or could it be my player? I've had the 220 for about a month and it's never done this. Thanks.

(This is a response I posted in another thread). Something similar happened at the end of January. They've screwed up their metadata in some fashion and different devices are affected differently. I'm seeing no HD, 5.1 or CC description markings on the S390, PS3 or Roku 2. For most movies which have 5.1 and/or CCs on the Roku 2 I'm seeing "Audio & subtitles" menus and can play them with those features, but not television series; on the S390 and PS3 I'm not seeing A&S menus for any titles. The HD annotation is unimportant since it'll ramp up to the HD resolutions even if they're not advertised in the title's description, but if it doesn't recognize the presence of 5.1 sound and/or closed captions it won't give you a menu with which to turn them on and won't turn them on by default.

Last time it took a few days for everything to come back to normal.

Thanks Michael. I hope they get it fixed. I only watch HD Netflix movies on my projector, so it sucks that I can't see which ones are HD when looking at my 220 interface.

Just tried it on a Sony BDP-S390 (same UI as the BDT220 and PS3) and it seems to be fixed.

Nice. I'll find out soon.

Well, Netflix is at it again. Last night my interface was working again(showing what titles were in HD, 5.1, CC). Again tonight they are not showing these things in the interface. What's the deal?

Don't know--I'm not seeing the problem on my Sony BDP-S390, Roku 2 XS or Playstation 3 (I could hook up the BDT220 which I still have, but I doubt that it'd be any different). It could be local to your Netflix servers; could be that it will propagate to the servers used by my devices and that hasn't happened yet.

The PS3 will output the highest resolution your setup shows the tv will accept (i.e., if you have included 1080p in your setup, that's what the PS3 will output).

Therefore, if it is a SD film, I go back into setup and change the highest resolution for the tv to 480. I would rather my video processor upconvert than the PS3. There is a significant improvement in video quality shown on my 65" screen. It takes a minute to accomplish; but for me the effort is well worth it.

Wouldn't it be better to set the highest output resolution of the PS3 to 480? Unless you do that the PS3 is still going to upconvert the SD Netflix stream to your screen's resolution.

Wouldn't that be a pain in the neck? Changing the output constantly to match the source resolution.

I did notice with the PS3 Amazon app that it did switch the output to 720P instead of the 1080P it normally sends. But the audio is Borked from the amazon app anyway so it's not even an option for me with the audio messed up.

Although even the PS3 Netflix App is messed up since it's sending DD instead of the DD+ it should be and is certainly capable of doing.

I was messing around with my PS3 Slim last night for a while. I had not turned it on a few months. And after my experience with the several apps I used on it last night. It might be a while before i use it again since all those streaming apps have some sort of issue that needs to be resolved. Since I have other devices with the same apps that do a better job it's really not an issue for me. But the Amazon UI was nice so if they ever fix the app, I would certainly prefer to use it on the PS3.

Yes, but if his goal is to let his outboard processor do the upconversion I don't see an alternative. It might be nice if there were an option for the Netflix player to examine a title to determine its maximum resolution and set its output resolution to that, but there isn't.

Almost every HD title has a 1080p encoding, so with adaptive bit rate tech there's the possibility that the player might switch up and down through 480p, 720p and 1080p encodings if available connection bandwidth or server responsiveness fluctuates. For them, it's best that the player set 1080p and do its own upconversion. Many televisions (like mine) take a second or two to adapt to a resolution change and what they do to a non-blank image while they adapt is not pretty.

I thought that's what I was saying (i.e., setup the PS3 to indicate it was connected to a TV that would not take higher than 480; therefore that's what the PS3 would output). I obviously wasn't specific enough.

I have a perplexing situation pertaining to Netflix streaming. I am streaming using a Panny 320 blu-ray player. I have a fast internet connection and a fast dual router. I am able to stream Vudu at the highest HDX quality every time at the full three bars. I also stream Amazon content in HD with no problems. I also stream Netflix with no buffering issues. So all would appear to be great.

I know that Netflix adjusts the quality of their stream based on the speed of the connection. Although the picture quality looks good streaming Netflix, it doesn't look like 1080P HD quality or anything close to it. So I decided to call Netflix and ask them what speed they showed me streaming their content. I was surprised when the rep told me I was averaging only about 2.5 mg. In order to get full 1080P quality, I'm told one needs to stream at about 5 mg. But how could I be streaming at only 5 mg when I'm streaming Vudu in HDX with the full three bars which would mean I must be streaming at a fast rate. So I called Vudu and the rep told me I was streaming Vudu at 10 mg. Very fast indeed. Then I called Amazon and the rep told me I was streaming on that site at about 8 mg. Why would Netflix be so far below the other two when I'm using the same blu-ray, the same router and the same PC to stream them all.

I tried streaming from my Samsung TV instead of the Panny blu-ray and the results were about the same. Very fast on Vudu and Amazon and very slow on Netflix.

Is Netflix throttling their stream? Is there any reason on earth why that service would be streaming so much slower than the others? I wonder if anyone here has called Netflix to ask what speed they show being streamed. Is it possible that no one is able to stream Netflix at a fast rate? That would mean no one is getting HD so that doesn't make sense. The picture definitely looks better than SD.

As I said, I am not having any buffering issues, but the idea that I am streaming at such a slow speed and therefore at such a low quality bothers me. And it doesn't make sense that it would be so much slower than the other streaming services.

Does anyone have any idea as to what could cause such a discrepancy and if the numbers the Netflix reps are giving me are even accurate?

Log into your Netflix account on a PC and go to your account settings. You can change the settings to the highest quality since it usually defaults to either the lowest or the middle tier due to some people's ISP having stricter bandwith caps than others. When I upgraded from DSL 6 meg to Comcast 20meg I didn't see that big of an improvement. Then one day while screwing around on the Netflix site, I went into my account settings and noticed the option to change the stream quality. Picture quality on certain shows now look great. Some shows Netflix might just have a crappy quality version so it won't make much of a difference but on the ones that they have high quality streams, it can look pretty nice, especially if you're on a PS3 and stream a show they have available in 1080p. It looks better than anything I used to watch with DirecTV HD.

Thanks, Joe. My settings are on the highest quality. That's one of the first things I checked. Netflix rep also confirmed that it's set for the highest quality. The PQ looks good, but how good can it really be if it's only streaming at 2.5 mg? I do wonder if everyone is streaming at this low rate and aren't aware of it. I would like someone to call Netflix and ask them what rate show they are streaming. I think people might be surprised.

I looked at my account and Best Quality said 1 GB/Hour. How much is that? If you stream at 5 mb/sec this multiplies out to 18,000,000,000. This is 18 Billion, right. What is a gig?

In this context a gig is 10-to-the-9th bytes (not to be confused with the common computing definition of 2-to-the-30th, the closest power of two to one billion).

Sorry, I am not an engineer or mathematician. Does this mean 5mb/sec will not exceed 1 GB/Hour?

5 Mbps * 3600 secs-per-hour = 18 Gbits/hour / 8 bits-per-byte = 2.25 GB/Hour. The description of Highest Quality on the "Manage video quality" page is "up to 1 GB per hour, or up to 2.3 GB per hour for HD". Netflix 1080p video is 4.8 Mbps + .192 Mbps stereo = 4.992 Mbps. DD+ 5.1 sound is at .384 Mbps, which with 1080p video = 5.184 Mbps which works out to 2.332 GB/hour.

The highest quality SD video is 1.75 Mbps, which with DD+ 5.1 sound works out to .96 GB/hour which is where that 1 GB/hour comes from.

Several months ago Netflix said the average stream was 2 mbps. IMO, most subs really do not care about stream rates, its all about low cost and convenience.

I wonder what percentage is Wii based? That alone being SD restricts the bandwidth to a large degree. Throw in a ton of Rokus connected to SD sets and the leading edge HD folks must surely be a small minority. Quite a while ago I saw a breakdown (percentage of all streaming) by device... it would be interesting to see how it stands now.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large percentage of Netflix streams are being run on small standard def bedroom TVs in kids' bedrooms with the player running on their game consoles. Given bandwidth to play the highest quality SD with the highest quality sound, you'd get that for 1.94 Mbps unless you throttled it with the "manage video quality" setting.