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Official List of Netflix Watch Instantly Titles w/5.1 Sound

post #1 of 554
12/11/10 at 2:13am
Thread Starter 
ATTENTION: There's a new streaming video search engine available--for details, see "TVAndMoviesNow.com: Streaming Video Search Engine Extraordinaire!". Among other things it can filter for titles with 5.1 sound, making this post (and the tedious maintenance thereof) completely unnecessary. Therefore this list will never be updated again . It's been real--see ya!

This is a list of Netflix Watch Instantly titles with 5.1 sound. Since such content was announced in combination with 1080p encodings for the PS3, my theory is that all titles with available 5.1 sound also have available 1080p encodings (which you'll get if bandwidth available on your connection is high enough). I could be wrong--there's currently no way to tell whether you're getting a 1080p video encoding. The Netflix site also lacks a filter for these titles, hence this list, arranged in alphabetical order . (EDIT: The Netflixhelps Twitter account has since informed me that not all titles with 5.1 sound will have 1080p encodings and vice-versa). (EDIT: Recently I decided to try to verify that some of these films with 5.1 sound also have 1080p encodings; the first dozen or so that I tried all had 1080p encodings, so I tested 20 HD titles without 5.1 soundtracks and all of them had 1080p encodings as well. I now believe that most if not all HD titles have 1080p encoding available when played on the PS3 and currently only on the PS3. Perhaps access to them will spread to players on other devices over time).

Players known to be capable of playing the 5.1 soundtracks available on the titles in this list:
  • Playstation 3
  • Apple TV 2
  • Roku 2 (presumably HD, XD and XS--XS verified); requires DD+ decoding AVR
  • Boxee Box (reportedly coming)
  • WD Live Plus
  • 2011 Panasonic products with Viera Cast/Viera Connect apps (DMP-BDTx10 series of BD players confirmed--I own one ; TVs with Viera Connect don't currently have support)
  • At least some Toshiba products with Net TV (55WX800 confirmed)
I'm sure that list will grow over time. If you can confirm something not already on that list, please post it here.

If you know of titles which aren't here, please post them and I'll add them to the list. (I compiled the initial list by laboriously scanning through several thousands of title descriptions in the PS3 Netflix player; now I use InstantWatcher.com to see a list of HD titles sorted by "Instant Release Date", queueing and checking all of the ones added since the last time I checked. I don't check the SD titles because I haven't run across one with 5.1 sound, though theoretically some might exist).

There are 517 available titles in the list as of 2 September (17.6% of 2943 total HD titles, 19 New!, 14 expirations, 3 expired titles renewed). Enjoy!
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post #2 of 554
12/11/10 at 2:27am
Excellent, I already know of 3 or 4 to add, but it's late, so tomorrow it shall be.
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post #3 of 554
12/11/10 at 6:50am
I'll look through my queue later. The good, The Bad,The Weirdeird looked and sounded amazing. And it was an awesome movie.
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post #4 of 554
12/11/10 at 11:50am
Yow that is a lot of terrible movies (with a few exceptions, obv). I'm too lazy to make a list but there is a ton of good 5.1 content, especially TV.
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post #5 of 554
12/11/10 at 12:05pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cubiczee View Post

Yow that is a lot of terrible movies (with a few exceptions, obv). I'm too lazy to make a list but there is a ton of good 5.1 content, especially TV.

I would generally agree, though I was entertained to various degrees by 11 of those listed at this writing. Many of those 11 were popcorn action movies like Eraser, The Last Boy Scout and Lethal Weapon 2. I'm not sure what's driving the selection, but no doubt it's partially related to what films the rights holders will let them offer 5.1 sound for (much less 1080p video).

I just went through my queue and then through some the genres in the order they were listed. I stopped after the "Violent Action Thrillers" (or something like that) subgenre. Most of the subgenres have 250 entries with a lot of repeats--I must have scanned through about 1000 titles to get that tiny list. It became kind of a compulsive thing after a while and I got very quick at it, automatically skipping Starz Play and ancient films. Maybe two or three seconds and three button presses per (on my trusty Harmony One ). During periods of intense boredom I may go through more .

It'd be so nice if they'd list "HD" and "5.1" in the line of text you get when you scroll over. Other Netflix players display "HD" (like the Xbox).
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post #6 of 554
12/11/10 at 1:00pm
Some more:

Departures (2008)
The Last Temtation of Christ (1988)
Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)
Red Riding Trilogy (2009)
Outbreak (1995)
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post #7 of 554
12/11/10 at 6:55pm
All TV series are in HD and 5.1 right? At least shows aired in the last few years.
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post #8 of 554
12/11/10 at 9:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cygnus2112 View Post
All TV series are in HD and 5.1 right? At least shows aired in the last few years.
Definitely not. I'd say the majority of the shows aren't. Most of the newer stuff added is HD but plenty of stuff that aired originally in HD just isn't available on Netflix that way.
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post #9 of 554
12/11/10 at 10:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cygnus2112 View Post
All TV series are in HD and 5.1 right? At least shows aired in the last few years.
Go to instanrwatcher.com to the HD section, and you can filter search all movies, or all tv shows offered in HD.
http://instantwatcher.com/genres/506...s=1&infinite=0

Click the HD option in the small selection box under the 'View' line.
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post #10 of 554
12/12/10 at 12:27am
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Posted very large update. I scanned through all genres through "newly added documentaries". (Lots of 5.1 in documentaries, by the way, especially NatGeo stuff from the past few years).
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post #11 of 554
12/12/10 at 12:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post
Posted very large update. I scanned through all genres through "newly added documentaries". (Lots of 5.1 in documentaries, by the way, especially NatGeo stuff from the past few years).
Mike, thank you for the listings, great idea for this thread!
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post #12 of 554
12/12/10 at 12:54am
Thread Starter 
Anyone who wants to take one or more sections and scan for 5.1, I'd really appreciate the help. I've got a lot of documentary subgenres to go and I haven't gotten to dramas, sci fi, etc (though I have been to Action Adventure and Comedy). Just PM me what you're going to tackle (so I don't waste time scanning that), record the names and release years and I'll mark it up with links, unless you're willing to add your own markup in the same fashion (also much appreciated):

[*][url=][i][/i][/url] () ()

I'll merge it in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by keenan View Post
Mike, thank you for the listings, great idea for this thread!
As I recall, the idea was yours--I just acted on it .
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post #13 of 554
12/12/10 at 11:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post

Anyone who wants to take one or more sections and scan for 5.1, I'd really appreciate the help. I've got a lot of documentary subgenres to go and I haven't gotten to dramas, sci fi, etc (though I have been to Action Adventure and Comedy). Just PM me what you're going to tackle (so I don't waste time scanning that), record the names and release years and I'll mark it up with links, unless you're willing to add your own markup in the same fashion (also much appreciated):

[*][url=][i][/i][/url] () ()

I'll merge it in.
As I recall, the idea was yours--I just acted on it .

Maybe, but you made the effort and actually did it.
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post #14 of 554
12/12/10 at 5:06pm
Went through my queue and found The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009) and Goodbye Solo (2008) that I don't think are listed.

Also I emailed instantwatcher.com to ask if they could add 5.1 as a search/filter option and he said he would if there's enough requests so I suggest you guys do the same.

Finally, The Kill Point was the first series I watched with the new PS3 app back when it came out. Excellent PQ but I don't remember being impressed by the sound...didn't help I didn't realize it was 5.1 and you had to select it (doesn't default to it) until I was on episode 5. Good series though.
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post #15 of 554
12/12/10 at 5:36pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mproper View Post

Also I emailed instantwatcher.com to ask if they could add 5.1 as a search/filter option and he said he would if there's enough requests so I suggest you guys do the same.

That'd be wonderful, but I doubt that it can be done. They couldn't list HD titles before Netflix added that to the public API, and if they were exposing that ability in their API I should think that they'd put that filter in their own website.
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post #16 of 554
12/12/10 at 6:12pm
A few more I found just glancing through some genres at random.

I'll look through for some more later.

EDIT: Just noticed some of those Nat Geo ones are listed in your OP....they're just not flagged as Nat Geo ones (figured you might want to do that since you have a section for Nat Geo titles in your list).
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post #17 of 554
12/15/10 at 12:18am
Thread Starter 
Okay--I browsed every title in the PS3 Player's genres and those are the ones that I found, complete, plus a few that weren't there from my queue and a few contributions given here. 249 titles total.

(mproper, I didn't label those with "Nat Geo" because the titles as listed in Netflix' library didn't. Except for Heroes seasons 2 and 3, "Robinhood" and "The Clique", I ran across all of the ones that you listed in the genres).

I know that this isn't an all-inclusive list, since some of the stuff in my and other people's instant queues weren't seen in the genre lists. (Though I may have missed a few by flipping through them too rapidly; I learned that, while the "HD" logo comes up with the title, sometimes there's a little delay drawing the menu and stating the duration and "5.1" doesn't come up until that's done. It's only a second, but I was flying through fast enough to beat that ).
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post #18 of 554
12/15/10 at 5:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post
I know that this isn't an all-inclusive list, since some of the stuff in my and other people's instant queues weren't seen in the genre lists.
It's a good start though. Keep in mind that the PS3's "genre list" isn't nearly all-inclusive, since it only lists 75 titles in each genre, and I don't believe it even shows all the genres.

But it is a good start. Hopefully Instantwatcher adds this, but as you pointed out, not sure it's in the public API. Yet, anyways.
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post #19 of 554
12/15/10 at 12:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mproper View Post
It's a good start though. Keep in mind that the PS3's "genre list" isn't nearly all-inclusive, since it only lists 75 titles in each genre, and I don't believe it even shows all the genres.
That may have been true in the past, but now a list can contain up to 250 titles. Some of the main genres have several subgenres and each of them can have 250 titles and there are subgenres of subgenres. For example, not counting "suggested for you" and "new arrival" subgenres, there are 9 subgenres of comedy; one of them, "romantic comedy" has 5 subgenres of its own, with a total of 496 little separate title listings; other subgenres are even larger. There's quite a bit of overlap--a "quirky romantic comedy" might also be listed as a "critically acclaimed romantic comedy", and on other lists). There were literally thousands of list entries to scan through, though I could skip ones that I knew that I'd seen before and Starz Play films, which are never HD--flipping through one every 3 seconds or so took several hours spread over a couple of days (I just put on some tunes and mechanically plowed through ). I have to admit that I skipped the family subgenres labelled for 7 year-old kids and younger.
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post #20 of 554
12/15/10 at 12:45pm
**sigh** I still only see 75 titles/genre

I know there are several versions of the app available, so maybe we're on different ones. Mine only shows up to 75.
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post #21 of 554
12/15/10 at 12:56pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mproper View Post
It's a good start though. Keep in mind that the PS3's "genre list" isn't nearly all-inclusive, since it only lists 75 titles in each genre, and I don't believe it even shows all the genres.

But it is a good start. Hopefully Instantwatcher adds this, but as you pointed out, not sure it's in the public API. Yet, anyways.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mproper View Post
**sigh** I still only see 75 titles/genre

I know there are several versions of the app available, so maybe we're on different ones. Mine only shows up to 75.
Huh. Choosing at random, the Crime-, Violent- and Suspenseful-Action Adventure sub-subgenres all list 250 titles (Military Action has 72). If I'd had your version of the browser the task would have been much less painful .
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post #22 of 554
12/15/10 at 1:06pm
Fear Itself is in HD/5.1. 24 should be too. Has netflix mentioned when other devices will get 5.1?
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post #23 of 554
12/15/10 at 1:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cygnus2112 View Post
Fear Itself is in HD/5.1. 24 should be too. Has netflix mentioned when other devices will get 5.1?
Fear Itself is on my list already. I'll check the seasons of 24--it wasn't in the genre lists.
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post #24 of 554
12/17/10 at 10:14pm
"Girl Who Played with Fire" and "Metropolis Restored" are not 5.1, but are listed as 5.1 on Netflix.

Also, thank you for making this list!
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post #25 of 554
12/17/10 at 11:54pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lament View Post

"Girl Who Played with Fire" and "Metropolis Restored" are not 5.1, but are listed as 5.1 on Netflix.

I just checked and both are 5.1. There's an item on the menu in the film's description dialog, "Audio and Subtitles"; select it and you'll be offered both 5.1 and Stereo audio choices. For unknown reasons the occasional title defaults to Stereo.
Quote:


Also, thank you for making this list!

You're welcome .
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post #26 of 554
12/18/10 at 12:02am
Thread Starter 
Quote:


Quote:
Originally Posted by Cygnus2112 View Post

Fear Itself is in HD/5.1. 24 should be too. Has netflix mentioned when other devices will get 5.1?

Fear Itself is on my list already. I'll check the seasons of 24--it wasn't in the genre lists.

BTW, I checked--they have the first seven seasons of 24 available to stream. Seasons 4, 5, 6 and 7 have HD encodings, but none have 5.1 sound.
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post #27 of 554
12/18/10 at 12:41am
"Girl Who Played with Fire"

This one is showing stereo here; PS3 playback device.
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post #28 of 554
12/18/10 at 6:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by keenan View Post

"Girl Who Played with Fire"

This one is showing stereo here; PS3 playback device.

Shows 5.1 for me.
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post #29 of 554
12/18/10 at 7:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by keenan View Post

"Girl Who Played with Fire"

This one is showing stereo here; PS3 playback device.

You have to do what Mike said above - go to "Audio and Subtitles" and select it. Apparently with a few titles it defaults to Stereo.
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post #30 of 554
12/20/10 at 12:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lament View Post

You have to do what Mike said above - go to "Audio and Subtitles" and select it. Apparently with a few titles it defaults to Stereo.

I was looking at the first film in the series, it's Swedish stereo. "Fire" looks as if it's only the dubbed English version though.
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