Official List of Netflix Watch Instantly Titles w/5.1 Sound - Page 9

I can believe that, though I should think that Netflix would want to keep the price low, so as not to discourage anyone from adding Netflix players to their products. Of course, at this point it's kind of de rigueur to include Netflix in your media player if you want it to be competitive, which no doubt gives Netflix a lot of leeway in pricing.

I can understand how initial licensing might reasonably cause some delays in getting Netflix on your product in the first place, but I'd expect access to new features for current licensees to be immediate for all, barring exclusivity agreements, like the one that Microsoft seemed to have for embedded console implementations for a year or so (and I suspect that Sony has now on use of the 1080p encodings). Anything else would seem like potential unfair restraint of trade. If you allow one licensed manufacturer to offer support for 5.1 soundtracks in their product while making me wait some months before I can offer it, in the meantime my product is a at a competitive disadvantage and it's your fault. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems legally actionable to me.

I've worked on numerous embedded software systems in hardware products which used a lot of off-the-shelf components--Java VMs, audio and video codecs, etc. AFAIK, every licensee of those component was informed of improvements and given access to the improved versions simultaneously. I can see that Netflix might want to review and sign off on your updated implementation before release, but they'd need to keep turnaround on that process pretty rapid. (If they do such reviews they're not very effective, given the glaring and immediately obvious bugs I've run across in some WI players).

You're welcome .

You have one??? I thought that it'd be a few months before they became available.

EDIT: I see that they're up for order at their website. Amazon is listing it, for pre-order without an estimated date. I think that I'll pre-order from them to save the $8 shipping that Roku wants--I'm excited about the product, but with 5 Netflix streaming devices already (counting this "HTPC") I can wait.

I've been scanning for images of the GUI in a review, but none of the few reviewers seem to think that that might interest anyone . Could you possible snap a pic of the Netflix interface indicating 5.1 sound for a title and post it? Thanks!

Thanks. Looks like they changed things more than I expected. Is the top level Netflix GUI the same? (I can hardly wait to get one of these things to see whether it gets the same 30%+-higher-bit-rate 1080p encodings that the PS3 gets).

Thanks for the pics! It looks as though it hasn't changed much if at all at the top. Does it indicate 5.1 in the "talk bubble" as you scroll through titles?

Yeah--my Panasonic DMP-BDT110 3D BD player does that adaptive bit rate thing, though it takes a while it before it starts playing. The PS3 leverages that tech to start playback in 1-3 seconds, displaying a quick-to-buffer-but-crappy encode first and gradually ramping up to higher bit rate, higher PQ encodes (quickly ramping up if your available bandwidth is very high). The BDT110 does not at this time switch encodes very smoothly; I often get a blank black frame or two between the old and the new encode (people have been calling them "black flashes"). It only happens during bad network conditions.

Right now the BDT110 is my favorite device for Netflix and VUDU. Navigation of the Netflix interface is a slow as compared to the PS3 and it doesn't have access to the 1080p encodes, but it has the other features of the PS3 (5.1 and closed caption support), it's dead silent and draws much less power.