Best possible Netflix streaming device - Page 23

I am new to dedicated streaming devices for Netflix. I have a moderately slow internet connection (6mbps). If I understand correctly, Netflix tests my internet speed, and then sends me the video quality that is appropriate for my speed.

Does a streaming device like the WD Live Plus buffer the movie so that I can get the higher quality? I would like to watch Netflix at higher definition even if it means I need to wait for the movie to buffer.

All devices buffer, but that is only designed to handle brief breaks and such. If you cannot keep up with the average data rate needed, it will either stop and buffer a bit, or drop to a lower resolution or bitrate, depending on the device.

I think in general, it's not like some PC players that will buffer huge amounts if needed. Most of these standalones will only buffer so much, no matter how bad your data rate is.

The WD Live Plus definitely uses adaptive bit rate tech, which avoids stopping to rebuffer by constantly evaluating available bandwidth on your connection to Netflix and other factors to smoothly and seamlessly change to a lower bit rate/lower PQ encoding when it can't keep up and back to a higher bit rate encoding when it's handling the speed well. A 6 Mbps connection to Netflix' servers won't get you the highest bit rate encoding all of the time, but it probably will handle it through static sections; maybe the entire title if it has no high action sequences. (1080p w/5.1 sound requires 4.8 Mbps for video plus .384 Mbps for 5.1 channel DD+ sound and additional bandwidth to keep ahead of it; it will only average that high during action scenes).

Some of these players have fairly large buffers. You can test this by yanking the network cord from your player to see how long it continues to run. Someone found that the PS3 buffers 229 seconds (don't quote me on that--I may be misremembering. It was something in excess of 2 minutes). At 5.1 Mbps, that 3.6 MB--not much memory in this day and age.

I should start something running on my Roku 2 and pull its plug to see what it buffers.

It is the player the decides to drop down to a lower rate? I assumed it was Netflix.

Can you force a player to continue trying a higher bitrate? This coupled with a large buffer would possibly work.

No--the client is the logical place to do this. It requires information that the servers aren't privy to and would unnecessarily place an additional computational load on the servers, figuring out what bit rate stream to deliver to many thousands of clients. Read this; you can find other articles and whitepapers by googling "adaptive bit rate streaming".

The only player I know with which you can do this is the PC player, using non-advertised debugging commands. Adaptive bit rate works, so why? I know that some A/V-ophiles would rather suffer through rebuffering pauses than temporary reductions in PQ, but if you're that much of an A/V-ophile stickler for quality you should stick with BDs.

You can force the Roku 1 to use a certain bitrate, but the highest quality encodes that it receives are well within your 6Mbps bandwidth anyway.


Something went wrong with your calculator.

You're right:

5.1 Mbps = 5,100,000 bits/sec / 8 = 637,500 bytes/sec * 229 secs = 145987500, aka 146 MB

Makes sense, since my bandwidth testing was getting 440+ MB for 10 minutes .

That's a pretty damn big buffer! Did you actually see a 229 second buffer on the PS3?

No, I'm not willing to put up with rebuffering pauses to get top notch quality, I'm just trying to squeeze out as much quality as possible without pauses. I'm willing to wait 20 minutes to start a movie and maybe take an intermission.

I did see that there was a video quality selection in Netflix - Nothing was selected, so I selected the highest. I didn't notice any difference watching Breaking Bad.

It would be nice if my TV showed info like encoding and bitrate so I can tell if I am already at the top quality. People's comments have led me to believe I should be OK at 6mbps.

When I Start streaming using my TV (Sony NX720), it has a red Netflix screen that says Checking Link Speed. It has a flood bar that goes from 1 - 10. When the flood bar gets to 4 it starts playing the selection. I assumed this means 4 out 10 for the link speed. Is my interpretation correct?

You might be, but I'm fairly certain that most people wouldn't be willing to wait that long .

AFAIK, only the PC and PS3 have a way to tell what the current stream speed is--at least I haven't heard anybody talk about another device with that (well, you can ask the Xbox for status and it'll tell you how many "bars" its streaming at and whether it's HD or not). You can bring up a little overlay in the upper lefthand corner on the PS3 which will tell you "Low/SD", "Medium/SD", "High/SD", "Medium/HD", "High/HD" or "X-High/HD"; the PC player will tell you its current buffering and playback speeds in Kbps. I wish that more players would implement such indicators.

Right now my guess is that your Sony TV's Netflix player cannot stream the highest bit rate (1080p/5.1 sound) encodings--very few players can yet. If that's the case and you actually get 6 Mbps on your connection to Netflix's servers (distinct from the rated speed of your network service), it should be fine for the 3.8 Mbps "High/HD" streams.

I have no idea how your television's Netflix player works. I know that the PS3 uses the adaptive bit rate tech to start streaming very quickly by quickly buffering a low quality encoding and ramping up to the maximum that your connection bandwidth will support. (The Zune video player on the Xbox does this as well--Microsoft calls it "Instant On").

Buffering problems are frequently a result of wifi interference. If you're using wifi, then it might be worth addressing that before looking for a superior streaming device. Running a long temporary Ethernet cable or moving the tv close to the router and plugging it in with a short cable, will conclusively answer if wifi is causing your problems. If eliminating wifi also eliminates the pausing to rebuffer, installation of an in-wall network cable is highly desirable.

Different devices may also buffer in different ways. I have a Sony Bravia TV (46EX700) and two Sony BD players (BD-S370 and BD-S380, in different rooms.) All of them show the amount of buffering by a blue bar that extends beyond the dot for the current location in the time bar. For the same title, the amount of buffering seems to be roughly the same on all devices, with the BD players maybe having a few seconds more. It seems to be roughly 2 minutes for SD.

The TV, at least for Netflix, seems to buffer almost continuously. Basically it seems to keep the buffer topped off. It also starts playing as soon as it can. If I FF just a bit, but stay within the buffer, it will start playing at the new point instantly. While FF is active, it just continues playing the video as normal.

Both of the BD players will fill the buffer before even starting, then only top it off every 15-30 seconds or so. If I FF within the buffer, it seems to flush it and start from scratch, causing a pause. The BD-S380 shows the bitrate it's able to download at on the timebar.

The TV and main BD player are connected to an Ethernet switch in the living room, so I can see the activity. The other BD player is in a bedroom, but my router is also there, so I can see the activity on the port. All are hardwired. I have Comcast Performance Internet, which is rated 12/2, but can burst to 24/4.

I am on Wifi, but I am not experiencing buffering problems. Just trying to determine if I am getting the top quality. If I had a larger buffer, I could possibly get a better quality stream.

But, in the interest of science, I'll drop back to the wired connection, straight from the modem.

Is there a good example of a netflix movie that would make it easier to tell what quality I am getting? I could then compare wired to wireless.

Or is there a network analysis tool (wireshark?) that would allow me to see what the encoding is?

With the NX720 it buffers about 33 seconds. I started a movie, paused it, waited about 10 minutes, disconnected the router from the modem, and then hit play on the movie. It played for 33 seconds. (HD Movie)

Not sure how far it buffers ahead if the movie is playing, may still be about 33 seconds. I didn't check that and I didn't need to aggravate my wife any more.

Power and 5.1 audio. The PS3 will not bitstream the DD+ on Netflix streams and converts it into a thin sounding basic DD5.1 (it could be the AC3 core of the encoding). You'd think that, if it won't bitstream, then it would fully decode it itself and output 5.1 channel LPCM, but that's not what's happening. Still, it's better than what it seemed to be doing before the recent update, outputting 7.1 channel LPCM with only two active channels.

All these streaming services are very low bandwidth. If the Wi-Fi network can't handle these low bandwidth streams then it is not properly setup. One Access Point is not enough if you have a lot of wireless devices. I have four Access Points so I can always get 100+Mb/s speeds from the wireless devices I have that are capable of those speeds.

But even with only wireless G, streaming from any of these video providers is not an issue if the wireless network is setup for proper coverage.

It sounds like what you're saying is that wifi can't cause netflix streaming problems. If that's the case, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Wifi is frequently the cause of streaming problems. Certainly the theoretical max speed and sustained throughput is much faster than is needed. However in the real world, it isn't unusual for actual throughput to drop below what is needed.

With that said, snash22 has corrected my interpretation of his post. He isn't having buffering issues but rather is lamenting that greater configurability issn't available for managing stream bit rate and buffering. But as general advice to give strangers on this forum, if someone is having streaming issues and has sufficiently fast broadband, a good step in diagnosing the problem is to check if wifi is at fault.

For instance, in some neighborhoods the wifi spectrum is hopelessly congested. Some of my friends can see over 20 unique SSIDs from within their apartment.

Or... some devices are mildly incompatible with some home routers. I had to replace a router to get my iPad to work reliably.

The list could go on and on. Wifi can definitely cause problems, especially when built into a TV sitting between speakers and other AV components.

On a side note, there are ads here in the Chicago area that U-Verse is now offering wireless set-top boxes. I haven't looked around to see what frequencies they use and if they would interfere with WiFi, and just how much bandwidth they actually have. Since U-Verse is VDSL-based IPTV, a standard WiFi-style connection would probably work, even for HD.

Also, I read a story about one utility that is getting complaints about their new 'smart' meters that use WiFi frequencies to communicate, causing interference.

I have a DSL connection which regularly tests at 6.1Mbps which works great with a ROKU2. I think (but can't prove) that I get the highest quality (1080P/5.1) streams most of the time - maybe falling back in very hi-action scenes. That said if it is - I don't notice it from the picture quality when it does fall back. The important point is that the connection tests at 6.1. I use Vudu Speed Test plus others to check the speed. If I look at the modem stats the link speed is around the 6.8Mbps which I think is consistent with the tested speed allowing for overhead. Note I am paying for up 7.1Mbps DSL. So it is important to know what actual speed you are getting.


I agree - unfortunately most of the players don't support this. You may want to check if your router will report the real-time throughput - that way you could see what actual data rate you are seeing. I run tomato on my router and I can see when I start a 1080P/5.1 title from Netflix - the download starts at a steady 6.1Mbps for the first few minutes - then it falls back (presumably because the buffer is full) with peaks and troughs as the buffer fills and empties.

As others have said if the TV is getting the 720P streams you should have no problem at all if your DSL really tests at 6Mbps

May I nudge this thread back on topic for a moment? This is all very informative, but from what I've picked up the Roku, PC and PS3 offer the best quality?
I installed Orb BR on my old Oppo and all that did for me was let me know that the PS3 is far better.
The WD TV Hub looks like exactly what I am looking for, but if the Netflix quality is sub-par it would be a waste of money.

Where'd you get the idea that the PC was one of the best quality-wise? It's okay, but it cannot play 5.1 sound from the titles which have it and there are still several hundred more titles in HD for embedded devices.

I haven't kept track of what devices can play 1080p--for a long time it was only the PS3, joined by the Roku 2 when it came out and recently some Samsung and LG televisions and the newest version of the WD TV Live and WD TV Hub. I'd try the WD TV Live myself, but it doesn't have support for either Amazon Instant Video or VUDU (Roku 2 doesn't have VUDU and the PS3 doesn't have Amazon, so nothing's perfect ).

I called Netflix and they've told me that the BDT110 and BDT210 will play netflix in 1080P. I called Panasonic and they've confirmed it.

I ordered the 210 on Amazon and will have it mid-week. What movies on Netflix are confirmed to be 1080p? I can test it out as soon as I get it.

I don't know, I guess I made that up. Netflix looks good on my pc. I just happen to not care about 5.1 when using that particular screen.

Sure PC looks good, but is nowhere near the best. If you are satisfied with your PC, then any stand-alone player will look just as good or better (except Wii and some TVs).

Unless there's been a recent firmware update, both companies lied to you. It's quite possible--I've been expecting it since the software components necessary to access the 1080p encoding became broadly available to the OEMs this summer. I'll check and do a bandwidth consumption test to see it's been updated.

AFAICT, nearly all HD Netflix titles have 1080p encodings. I've only run across a handful which didn't.

The new Live, but not Live Plus or Live Hub (AFAIK there is only one version of those). Tech of the Hub's recent post.

Huh? Here's what that blog post says:

(Emphasis added).

Nope--no such update yet. Bandwidth consumption for my test (average bandwidth over minutes 4 through 13 of Ong Bak 2) remains consistent with 720p. That being said, I'm expecting it to be updated at some point, and the BDTx10s are excellent 3D BD players with a very good suite of streaming media apps which I can highly recommend. The only improvements I'm looking for in it are 1080p Netflix (it can already do 5.1 sound and soft subtitles/closed captions) and 5.1 sound in the Amazon player for titles which have it.

I thought Logitech gave up on the Revue?