1080p and 5.1 sound comes to Netflix (PS3 only for now) - Page 6

Originally Posted by aaronwt

VUDU uses 720P24. At least they used too. I'm guessing it's still the case.

I checked out around eight titles last night with Netflix streaming from the TiVo, 360 and PS3. The quality coming through my TiVo, with Native output resolution and then going through my DVDO DUO was better than what was coming from the PS3 where the PS3 was doing the scaling up to 1080P60.

Originally Posted by dfiler

Quite true.

But the point I was making wasn't that 24fps is impossible. Just that nobody has actually watched a netflix stream at 24fps. A netflix blog from 2008 indicates that netflix movies are indeed encoded at the native framerate. However we've yet to actually see 24fps delivered to our screens.

Originally Posted by dfiler

But as of today, no customer has ever played a netflix stream at 24fps.

Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT

Can someone familiar with media encoding explain this to me?

TV's cannot sync to this. What is the playback device doing with it in order to display it?

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

Read this.

Some televisions will accept this and process it. If the refresh rate of the display is some multiple of 24 (96, 120, 240, etc) it can display it smoothly, without doing weird stuff to convert it. A 120 fps display would do 5:5 pulldown, which is simply displaying each frame 5 times.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

Read this.
Some televisions will accept this and process it. If the refresh rate of the display is some multiple of 24 (96, 120, 240, etc) it can display it smoothly, without doing weird stuff to convert it. A 120 fps display would do 5:5 pulldown, which is simply displaying each frame 5 times.

Originally Posted by keenan

I thought that those displays, most of them anyhow, were not doing a true 24 multiple pulldown, that it was some software process being applied to the signal rather than an actual 3:3, 4:4, 5:5 etc, I believe this is especially true for those 120 and 240Hz refresh displays, it's marketing and not a true pulldown process. I looked at some of those 120Hz when they first came to market and that was the conclusion reached in many threads on this board.

Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT

Unless I'm misunderstanding everything, I think what you're talking about is unrelated since the box itself is doing pulldown to output 60Hz.



I assume what you're talking about is what a 120Hz/240Hz TV does with 1080p24 input (BD player)? If so, that actually depends on the TV and its settings.

Originally Posted by keenan

Well, that's the whole point though isn't it? Don't you want the output to be a true 24 fps so it can be displayed as such with a display that can handle those types of signals?

Regarding the displays, if I recall it's some sort of 'smoothing' algorithm and they tack on a 120 or 240 moniker, it's not real a 5:5 pulldown. I stopped looking at them at that point and stayed with my trusty 3-eyed monster with the 9" guns, things may have changed in the last few years.

Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT


The discussion should be moved to a different thread though - it isn't a simple subject

Originally Posted by keenan

No, it certainly isn't.

Originally Posted by Raistlin_HT

While I'm aware of the telecine process, where I was confused was simply by 720p24 (or 480p24). While I understand it should work no different from 1080p24, I wasn't aware of it being used in anything since there are nearly 0 displays that support it.

A corollary to this is the fact that means the playback devices must be doing the conversion. I wasn't aware these boxes did that. I always assumed they were simply spitting out the cadence being sent to them. It's too bad there's no way to force the 24p output.

I guess another point of confusion are HDTV broadcasts. Aren't they actually 720p60 and 1080i60? I'm curious why they don't use some more efficient methods, and have the box convert it to the mandatory formats accepted by TV's? Or is that how it works?

Originally Posted by zoro

Does XBOX do 1080P and 5.1 too?

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

I'm not sure that there's any way for a display to even say that it can accept 720p24 in its E-EDID. Which is weird because it's one of the ATSC formats.

I don't understand--are you talking about Netflix's encodings of TV content?

Originally Posted by Micker

So basically netflix isn't sending a 1080p stream, its just allowing the PS3 to upconvert the stream to 1080p. CHEESY!!!!

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

We're hoping for a less ambiguous statement from Netflix and/or Sony to clarify this issue (and perhaps to identify which Netflix streams are 1080p, if they didn't mean upconversion). It's possible that they don't realize that it needs clarification .

Originally Posted by slimoli

That's a good idea. Lets chalenge Netflix to tell us which titles can stream at 1080i/P. I will be happy with just one.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

How is it that you think that you know that every Netflix streaming player embedded in dozens of devices does not send the material to displays which can handle it at 24fps?

AFAIK, all of the download and streaming services encode filmic sources to 24fps. It's easy to encode because it's the frame rate of the source and it's easy to decode and convert to some other rate in software/firmware. (It's also more compact than 60 fps encodings would be). No doubt some of the newer televisions that have embedded Netflix (Vudu, Amazon, etc) streaming players and multiple-of-24 fixed refresh rates display the material directly. BD players with embedded streaming network video players which can send 24fps material from disc at 24 fps to televisions which can handle it (as detected via their HDMI connections) probably send streaming video at that rate to such displays--note that the PS3 is one such BD player. I'm not sure if it does, but the Roku box certainly could send received 24fps content to displays which can handle it.

In the PC player (go to Netflix, choose something and click the PLAY button), once the video is displayed, type CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-M; a little menu will pop up, the first item on which is "A/V Stats"--click it. (This won't work if you've put the player into fullscreen mode, but you can take it out of fullscreen, do it, and go back to fullscreen). Some text will appear overlayed on the video giving various bits of information. One line of it is "Video Frames (rendered/dropped): X/Y" where "X" and "Y" are numbers. This displays how many video frames were processed in the last second and how many were dropped (most of the time Y will be 0 or things aren't going well ). If you look at this while playing a film, X will be 24 (or 24 minus however many frames were dropped, if any); if you look while displaying television episodes, X will be 30. (Some HDTV content will be 24fps, because that's how they encode it for BDs and that encoding is the source Netflix has to work with).

If what you mean is that no television can display actual 24 fps, then you're right. But those which have refresh rate which are multiples of 24 fps can display it smoothly.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

We're hoping for a less ambiguous statement from Netflix and/or Sony to clarify this issue (and perhaps to identify which Netflix streams are 1080p, if they didn't mean upconversion). It's possible that they don't realize that it needs clarification .

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

Netflix used to host some community forums where I asked questions like this before and got answers from Netflix employees but they've sadly removed it.

Originally Posted by keenan

Yes, that's what we really need, and even though it's only been a few days, the silence could be saying something in and of itself. If there really was 1080p content available from Netflix, I'd think they would be screaming it from the rooftops, not as a throwaway comment confirming a statement from a partner company. They were proud enough about the audio to release a statement with Dolby, but virtually nothing about the 1080p, that alone pretty much confirms for me that any 1080p content coming out of the PS3 is purely upscaled 720p native material(currently of course).

Originally Posted by keenan

Yes, that's what we really need, and even though it's only been a few days, the silence could be saying something in and of itself. If there really was 1080p content available from Netflix, I'd think they would be screaming it from the rooftops, not as a throwaway comment confirming a statement from a partner company. They were proud enough about the audio to release a statement with Dolby, but virtually nothing about the 1080p, that alone pretty much confirms for me that any 1080p content coming out of the PS3 is purely upscaled 720p native material(currently of course).

Originally Posted by dfiler

Could you describe in more detail?

I'm confused by how the PS3 or netflix would be applying overscan to a menu. Because this menu system is specific to the PS3, overscan as compared to what?

Are you refering to the interface design and the amount of blank space around menu contents?