Netflix streaming quality - Page 88

You know I feared their reputation when moving from Verizon DSL to Comcast last summer. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area but in mountain (rural) locations they have actually surpassed my expectations.

Both locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains

My home - replacing Verizon DSL - the Comcast installer spent nearly three hours running the cable from a pole across the road to the house and did a very professorial job of running the cable through crawl spaces etc to the other side of the house. He then did a very thorough test of modem signal level. The result a very reliable 20 Mbps cable service replacing an unreliable Verizon 4 - 6 Mbps service and actually saving money when Ooma phone savings factored in.

My son's home - a rental with previous Comcast service. When we activated the service on a weekend we found it was not reliable - they got it going remotely on the Saturday and set a tech out on Sunday. He spent a couple of hours testing the signals in the house and made some adjustments but eventually determined they needed to make adjustments where the service was being delivered from the main road. He had to go and get different truck (on a Sunday) with the equipment needed to do this.

Since then both my and my sons service has been very reliable.....

When I look at my Docsis 3 modem signal levels they are pretty much as good they can get.

Four bonded download channels with

Signal to Noise Ratio 35 dB 36 dB 36 dB 37 dB
Downstream Modulation QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256
Power level 0 dBmV 2 dBmV 2 dBmV 3 dBmV

Now I absolutely agree Comcast should support OpenConnect - and frankly hope Netflix and other ISP's highlight the benefits of OpenConnect (after all streaming is a major reason I and others pay for High Speed Internet) - but otherwise Comcast is doing a (surprisingly) good job of delivering High Speed Internet in remote location where both cell phone and OTA TV coverage is spotty at best.
Edited by undecided - 3/14/13 at 12:00am

I have Cable One, which as far as I can tell isn't in any of the ones mentioned. They must get there internet from somewhere. All I have with them is internet, and the lowest I've ever measured was 30 mb and the highest 50 mb.

To be perfectly honest with you, I've compared both HD to Super HD on my wife's Window's 8 PC and on my PDP and the difference is negligible. Unless you're really into 3D, or have a very large set, it really shouldn't be an issue, at least it's not for me.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 3/14/13 at 11:22am

As I've said before, Super HD may be a case of "the Emperor's new clothes". Netflix claims that it's superior without offering any objective proof whatsoever. Hey--it's 30% higher bit rate than their regular 1080p; must be better, right??? They've got us by the "more is always better" short hairs .

In any case people always want what they don't have, particularly if it's supposed to be better than what they have. You can tell them that it's not but they'll want to see for themselves. Folks with really big screen TVs say that they can clearly see the difference.

One advantage of SuperHD may not just be the higher bitrate, but a better chance of getting your full bandwidth. With a cleaner connection to the ISP's internal network, there may be fewer overloaded routers in the way. Too often, I give up watching something because it will not stream at even High/HD.

That's more of an advantage of an ISP setting up for Open Connect. If they set up Netflix's storage cache appliances in their local network segments Netflix claims an 87% chance that what you want to see is sitting on a machine in your provider's LAN and can be streamed to you without it having to travel over any portion of the Internet backbone. Given that Netflix is supposedly 30% of the Internet load in prime time hours, that's a win-win for everyone.

The more you blow up an image, the more detail it loses obviously. Therefore, it's not hard to believe, that even small increases in visual resolution on large or projection based TV's, can easily be seen.


I would think, based on what I have read on the Netflix offers Super HD and 3D thread, that the fact I have Open Connect, maybe the reason why I rarely have streaming issues with HD.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 3/14/13 at 3:53pm

You will definitely notice a big difference on a big screen TV (73" and larger).

Floyd

Did you read my follow up post?




Ian

I stream in many cases thru a PS3 Phat onto a 110" screen .. using recommended seating distance / consistent 30mbps connection .. and on the NF HD material, the PQ is better than most would expect .. now, the closer you get, sure, you'll begin to see degradation / pixels, but at 12' - 14', it's pretty darn good ..

I goofed in my original post. I meant Open Connect in general, not just SuperHD.

Has anyone gotten the warning from Netflix about streaming from only 1 source at a time? I got it a couple nights ago. When I attempted to start a movie, a screen came up stating I can only stream from 1 source at a time, and the movie would not play.

I've gotten a warning about only being able to stream from two sources. I'm on the two out BD plan so I can only stream from two devices concurrently. When I was on the three out plan the limit was three.

So if a customer has streaming only, they would have a limit of one stream at a time .. ??

I was not aware of the rule based on streams being limited to the number of disk plan ..

There is an old thread on this subject:

I Just Got My First Netflix Warning

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1333461/i-got-my-first-netflix-warning

IIRC it has always been that way but the enforcement was pretty lax. Now that it is more popular the content owners are most likely cracking down on SVOD providers therefore Netflix will start to really enforce the rules.

Thanks .. read it .. makes sense ..

There are two streaming plans. Both have a two device at a time limit regardless of your DVD plan, since they are now (unfortunately) only available as two separate subscriptions.




Ian

I don't know why I got a warning then. My daughter was the only one streaming at the time. Not only the warning came up, it would not even play the movie.

Why would anyone ever get the limited streaming plan, limiting you to 2 hours a month? Am I reading that correctly?

Yes. I doubt too may people subscribe to that plan.


Ian

I would think that anyone who can afford a network connection and a streaming device should be able to pay more than $4.99. As to the error, it's most likely a computer programmer's error. Most languages have an IF then ELSE statement.

Something like this:

If (streaming device) sends 100 then display this message
Else
If (streaming device) sends 101 then display this message
Else
And so forth.

In case the programmer hasn't thought of all the possibilities, he should put in a final Else that would say something like "Unknown Error." If he doesn't it can fall through into other code and display most anything and possibly lock the whole stream up. Something like that probably happened. You can look at code until you are blind and not think of every possibility, hence the catch all ending ELSE.

Floyd

They must have changed it. At one point if I was on the five out plan I could stream five concurrent streams, four out, four concurrent streams, etc. Although I have not been on the three out plan for several months.

I've had issues with my Roku2 in the past where it would think the Roku was still streaming something even though it had already backed out of the Netflix app. I guess at some point it timed out but it would sometimes be that way for at least half an hour.

As I posted earlier, I believe that it changed when they separated the subscription plans.



Never had that issue. If it's still a problem I would contact Roku support.


Ian

I noticed an intermittent slow-down on Netflix while using my new Roku 3 last night where the quality would go up and down noticeably.

There was a story in the NY Times this morning and wonder if online streamers like Netflix are beginning to see an impact.

Excerpt from the article:

Firm Is Accused of Sending Spam, and Fight Jams Internet

Perhaps related to the previously noted problems and perhaps not, but a few nights ago my son came in while I was watching Netflix streaming and said he couldn't watch anything because too many devices were in use. That didn't make sense to me, so went to checking and long story short someone had jacked my account somehow and was apparently using it to babysit kids with a bunch of Disney stuff no one in our household would ever watch.

Check your Recently Watched queue once in awhile for irregularities.

Of course Netflix in their great wisdom no longer allows access to individual devices, so I had to change my password and then disconnect all devices. That put a stop to the interloper.

You don't want to know what heinous punishments I think should be meted out to those who wreak havoc on the lives of others via the internet with viruses, hacking, and such.

You can individually disconnect many if not most Netflix playing devices but only if you have the device (in the common PS3-style UI or the Xbox, enter UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT UP UP UP UP and it'll show you some version information and give you the option to deactivate). I'll never understand Netflix's reasoning for removing the ability to see a list of devices active on your account and to deactivate specific ones from their web site. Just another stupid decision on their part.

Do I ever agree with you about punishment for this jerks that seem to permeate the internet.!

Random; I’ve been catching some of what I believe are newly added Aubrey Hepburn movies recently – some in just HD and not the ‘Super HD.’ The quality has been impressive! I’ve managed to never see any of these before and it’s a real treat to see them streamed in the quality they are streaming in.

The color in Funny Face was pretty remarkable imho. I’ve been watching a ton of Blu-ray from Redbox after getting a new plasma and these old films on Netflix are some real eye candy on the plasma for the cost of a Netflix subscription. I’m almost glad that this is my introduction to these old films.