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Netflix adds 3D and Super HD - Page 20

post #571 of 1259
2/17/13 at 4:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post


The question is whether they have some obligation to prevent it.

 

Obviously, on the surface Netflix not addressing the issue is favorable (for them) as it would only tend to increase their subscribers. Whether the content providers are concerned about it I'm sure is a matter of volume. Technically it just seems to me if they tied the account to one region most of their concern would be addressed. Of course, one could open more than one account and use each with a different region but there is always ways around something...

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post #572 of 1259
2/17/13 at 5:16pm

First rule of fight club....

 

 

Don't talk about fight club-especially with the owner of the building where fight club's going on. rolleyes.gif

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post #573 of 1259
2/17/13 at 5:22pm
If Netflix really wanted to crack down on people using other region servers they would.

They also allow stuff like account sharing across multiple devices/addys. You'd think they'd be more concerned about that than they would about region-hopping.
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post #574 of 1259
2/17/13 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post

Where did you see a Netflix rep comment on it?
The question is whether they have some obligation to prevent it. Unblock-US is simply exploiting the permission which Netflix explicitly gives their customers when using their accounts in other countries. Can Netflix figure out that you're coming from Unblock-US and block you? Probably. Do they have to? Perhaps not.

In any case Unblock-US has been operating for over a year and Netflix hasn't done anything to address the "problem" yet. Unblock-US is also not the only service of its kind.


According to a conversation I had with a Netflix rep, (when I called in regard to another issue that was unrelated) what you have just posted is accurate. This issue has been going on with Canadian subscribers for some time and addressing it is not a priority for them, at least for now.


Ian
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post #575 of 1259
2/17/13 at 10:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Westly-C View Post

First rule of fight club....


Don't talk about fight club-especially with the owner of the building where fight club's going on. rolleyes.gif

What he says is true.......
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post #576 of 1259
2/18/13 at 10:30pm
Unblock-US.com has had a makeover--looks pretty good.
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post #577 of 1259
2/18/13 at 10:31pm

Note-unblock has given it's site a makeover. My bookmark flaked when trying to go to the old page where the Region switcher was located. When you arrive at the main page click Get Started to take you to the re-designed Page for ''Region switch'' drop down menu-now under a green toolbar underneath a large banner photo, and the Check Service bar is now a round button on said toolbar.

 

It seems to have been made over to emphasize it's VPN capabilities, with less to do about Netflix and Hulu....Were we blabbing too much? rolleyes.gif confused.gif rolleyes.gif

 

.

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post #578 of 1259
2/18/13 at 11:45pm
I hadn't noticed that they don't seem to mention any service by name anymore and they removed the banner ads for moreflicks.com.
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post #579 of 1259
2/19/13 at 6:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Westly-C View Post

Note-unblock has given it's site a makeover. My bookmark flaked when trying to go to the old page where the Region switcher was located. When you arrive at the main page click Get Started to take you to the re-designed Page for ''Region switch'' drop down menu-now under a green toolbar underneath a large banner photo, and the Check Service bar is now a round button on said toolbar.

It seems to have been made over to emphasize it's VPN capabilities, with less to do about Netflix and Hulu....Were we blabbing too much? rolleyes.gifconfused.gifrolleyes.gif

.

On my Page it says "Your Service is setup for Netflix". Right above where you select the region. From my point of view now it is emphasizing Netflix. I don't recall Netflix being mentioned this way when I went to the page before. But the page is certainly better for me since I can see everything I need on the first page.
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post #580 of 1259
2/19/13 at 7:58am

Returning to the site, I see where I didn't need to click the Get Started button. The email entry box is now visible under the 3 step toolbar-I'm thinking my cookies were also confused and the page didn't load everything properly the first time last night. After you enter your account email, there's a ''Set it up'' & ''Check Again'' tab next to it to activate service, and the Region switcher is next to it.

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

screencap-

 

 

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post #581 of 1259
2/19/13 at 10:08pm
Just a quick question on switching to Canadian Netflix, will my Instant Queue still be there when I switch back?
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post #582 of 1259
2/19/13 at 10:21pm

Yes, our queues remain intact when you switch back. For reasons that have never been explained, NF does not provide Q capability to the international services. So, one cannot be displayed while 'traveling'.

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post #583 of 1259
2/20/13 at 6:07pm
Wow! eyeIO's encoder has been awarded THX certification! From that PR:
Quote:
The new THX Digital Cinema HD Video Encoder certification program tests 46 critical data points in six major categories using evaluation test material developed by the top seven Hollywood studios to produce a score that objectively assesses picture quality. A THX score of 90 on a scale of 100 is considered ‘THX Excellent Quality’ and eyeIO’s H.264 First-generation encoder was able to produce an exceptional 95.528 score at an Internet streaming bitrate of 5.8 Mbps—an astonishing performance metric in today’s professional digital media.

Could it be a coincidence that Netflix's higher Super HD encode bit rate is 5.8 Mbps? I doubt it smile.gif.

(Sorry for the multi-post; that appeared at the bottom of a post that I made in the "X-High/HD no longer available" thread).
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post #584 of 1259
2/20/13 at 6:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Westly-C View Post

Yes, our queues remain intact when you switch back. For reasons that have never been explained, NF does not provide Q capability to the international services. So, one cannot be displayed while 'traveling'.

You'd think that they could show that subset of what's in your IQ which is available in the region you're in and allow you to put things into your queue which are also available in your home region. They do something similar to "Recently Watched"; things that I recently watched in a given region reappear in that list when I return to that region.
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post #585 of 1259
2/21/13 at 12:30am
My Kaspersky Internet Security tried to update last night from 2012 to 2013 - however it always hung at the end of the update. I am still using the unblock-us DNS.

After multiple reboots and no success I tried switching back to OpenDNS and Kaspersky instantly finished the update.
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post #586 of 1259
2/21/13 at 2:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by undecided View Post

My Kaspersky Internet Security tried to update last night from 2012 to 2013 - however it always hung at the end of the update. I am still using the unblock-us DNS.

After multiple reboots and no success I tried switching back to OpenDNS and Kaspersky instantly finished the update.

Glitches like that is the reason I won't use unblock-us as my primary DNS.
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post #587 of 1259
2/21/13 at 2:07pm
Thought I would share this email I received from Netflix for Optima Online customers:




The Best Netflix Performance is on Optimum Online

Dear Ian,
Good news! Optimum Online is now the top-ranked major Internet service provider for Netflix performance.
Optimum Online high speed Internet customers are enjoying the best Netflix picture quality ever with Netflix Super HD.
It’s our clearest, smoothest HD picture yet! Not available on Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse. And the best news of all-
it’s already included for free in your Netflix membership.

Enjoy!

–Your friends at Netflix




Ian
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post #588 of 1259
2/21/13 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by reddice View Post

Glitches like that is the reason I won't use unblock-us as my primary DNS.

It's the first glitch like that which anyone has reported. Of course, I don't use Unblock-US' name servers all the time because my provider now is now hooked up to Open Connect.
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post #589 of 1259
2/21/13 at 3:04pm
I'll always have to use Unblock. Because of Redbox I don't forsee Verizon FIOS ever supporting Open Connect.
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post #590 of 1259
2/21/13 at 7:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveFi View Post

I'll always have to use Unblock. Because of Redbox I don't forsee Verizon FIOS ever supporting Open Connect.

Never say never--they don't want to look bad in comparison to the other ISPs ("Cox gives you Netflix's highest quality video; FiOS doesn't"). Also most anyone using Verizon has a choice to go to cable and/or U-verse. And then there's the fact that Open Connect is a better way to deal with Netflix's traffic in their network.
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post #591 of 1259
2/22/13 at 8:32am
I mentioned before that I had started a thread at Unblock about the erratic Super HD delivery.

http://support.unblock-us.com/customer/portal/questions/802121-erratic-netflix-superhd-connection

I am still plodding along with them but I think I have finally got a meaningful reply from Kay Anderson in the tech department. Here is the last paragraph:
Quote:
I've been following the thread over on the forums and understand yours and others concerns, how about if some of you would be willing to test a few things with our tech team over the coming weeks? You guys are pretty technical minded, let's be constructive about this issue shall we?

My equipment and knowledge is very basic and I am hopeful that one or more you will volunteer to hopefully get to the bottom of this.

Here is Kay's complete reply:
Quote:
I'm sorry we've been unable to answer your problem thus far.

There are two issues at play here.

Firstly your Blu-Ray player may not be super HD compatible, even though it is device capable of outputting to 1080. Until we have a definitive list from Netflix of what Tv's and Blu-Ray players are supported, then I'm afraid we will not know.

Secondly I suspect this issue is due to the Adaptive Bit-rate streaming algorithm that Netflix uses to stream in Super HD. It should always ramp up to the highest bit rate encode available to you that fits in the resolution you've set on your device. This isn't always the case - and for some reason the algorithm doesn't always get served the way it's supposed to, as the device doesn't handle it the right way.

The issue for us is that this problem is only affecting a very small percentage of people using our service. Can it be noted too that there are even cases of this happening to people who don't use a DNS service like ourselves, who's "local" ISPs support open connect.

I've been following the thread over on the forums and understand yours and others concerns, how about if some of you would be willing to test a few things with our tech team over the coming weeks? You guys are pretty technical minded, let's be constructive about this issue shall we?
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post #592 of 1259
2/22/13 at 9:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGA View Post

I mentioned before that I had started a thread at Unblock about the erratic Super HD delivery.

This statement by you in that thread is wrong:
Quote:
Actually Super HD does not require a lot of bandwidth. Its maximum is 5800kbps. This is actually the bandwidth the Netflix offered before they started playing games with Super HD only being available with certain IPS.

I used to get "Super HD" when it was called X-High without any issues.

X-High/HD was 4800 Kbps, 22% lower than the higher bit rate Super HD encode. You needed 1 Mbps less bandwidth to reliably keep ahead of it (5800 Kbps needs 7 Mbps and 4800 Kbps needs 6 Mbps).

Just saying.
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post #593 of 1259
2/22/13 at 11:09am
Your correction much appreciated. Accuracy is important.
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post #594 of 1259
2/22/13 at 12:21pm
I'll be happy to volunteer (if they don't ignore me as usual biggrin.gif).
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post #595 of 1259
2/23/13 at 1:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGA View Post

I mentioned before that I had started a thread at Unblock about the erratic Super HD delivery.

http://support.unblock-us.com/customer/portal/questions/802121-erratic-netflix-superhd-connection

BTW, last night I made a post to that thread describing how my experience getting Super HD encodes while using "normal" DNS servers differs from when I use Unblock-US servers.
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post #596 of 1259
2/23/13 at 2:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland View Post

In both case, SbS T&B, they are resampled back to the input format, i.e. the signal to the display may be 1080i. But the fact remains it will have ½ the V or H resolution. The up side to these methods is they can use existing channels (ATSC, DVB-S, DVB-T, etc.) to provide 3D. Thankfully the BDA sucked it up decided to start at ground zero and introduce a new format with full resolution. The down side was it was not backwards compatible with older players and required new hardware (except the PS3).

On the 17th, I tweeted...
Quote:
What's the maximum resolution of the new 3D video? It appears to be top & bottom format, limited to 720p.

...to Netflixhelps, to which they responded, on the 20th...
Quote:
That doesn't sound right. You should be getting 3D in 1080p. Please see additional information here: http://nflx.it/WSmHEy .

(Don't bother with the link--it's an unhelpful Netflix support page).

After that I dug around and found that 1080p is apparently possible with TaB formatting, as specified in OpenCable Content Encoding Profiles 3.0 Specification on page 23. At a glance it looks as though they achieve this by halving the color resolution and packing the top and button color into the same space, to be reconstituted by the client. They had to cut something in half to fit two frames into the same space and they went with color precision rather than resolution.
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post #597 of 1259
2/23/13 at 3:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by michaeltscott View Post

On the 17th, I tweeted...
...to Netflixhelps, to which they responded, on the 20th...
(Don't bother with the link--it's an unhelpful Netflix support page).

After that I dug around and found that 1080p is apparently possible with TaB formatting, as specified in OpenCable Content Encoding Profiles 3.0 Specification on page 23. At a glance it looks as though they achieve this by halving the color resolution and packing the top and button color into the same space, to be reconstituted by the client. They had to cut something in half to fit two frames into the same space and they went with color precision rather than resolution.

Aren't you using the PS3 for 3D? The PS3 seems to be limited to 720P output from streaming apps. The PS3 also only outputs 3D from VUDU in 720P. When I view 3D from VUDU on my Panny BDT-220, it is 1080P.
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post #598 of 1259
2/23/13 at 4:40pm
For those in Sin City (which I call Hometown USA), Cox Cable has enabled Open Connect access in Las Vegas! Successfully streamed SuperHD and 3D (!) content through my PS3 today. Yea!
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post #599 of 1259
2/23/13 at 5:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by aaronwt View Post

Aren't you using the PS3 for 3D?

No, I don't currently have a 3D television (though I'll probably replace my old 47" Mitsubishi LCD panel with something bigger in the next few months), so my interest is academic smile.gif. If I did I'd check out the average bit rate of it; if it were 10 or 12 Mbps it would jibe with Netflix's stated requirements.
Quote:
The PS3 seems to be limited to 720P output from streaming apps. The PS3 also only outputs 3D from VUDU in 720P. When I view 3D from VUDU on my Panny BDT-220, it is 1080P.

Perhaps the reason that you're getting 720p is PS3 limitations? I guess we won't know until platforms other than the PS3 and some LG TVs get 3D Netflix support. We know that they produce a number of different sets of video encodes, each in some way specific to one or more platforms; maybe the 3D that you get on the PS3 is tailored to its capabilities.

I've tweeted Netflixhelps again to see whether they can provide more information.
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post #600 of 1259
2/23/13 at 5:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by boblinds View Post

For those in Sin City (which I call Hometown USA), Cox Cable has enabled Open Connect access in Las Vegas! Successfully streamed SuperHD and 3D (!) content through my PS3 today. Yea!

Are you sure you weren't getting it any sooner? I thought that they probably launched it nationwide last week sometime--I only checked after reading in another forum that it was available on Cox Phoenix and Cox Orange County.
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