[dman777]

I don't have cable tv. I watch mostly movies on my sony CRT 27" off of hulu or netflix instant streaming(using my PC through tv out on video card). I would like to have a bigger TV and was thinking about a Plasma 42 or 46 inch. Right now the pic quality is excellent when viewing content from streaming hulu or netflix. Would it be the same quality on a plasma? my fear is that the standard definition signal expanded on a plasma would look horrible...but I'm hopeing I'm wrong. I want to find out without learning the hard way, so if anyone could please tell me I would be greatfull.


Thanks,

-dman

 

[Richard Smith]

I have Netflix streaming to a 50" Pansasonic plasma. At its best its equal to a good DVD. At its worst its much better then a VHS tape but not as good as a mediocre DVD.

 

[dman777]

with netflix streaming my bandwith is always the same and i always get the highest quality all the time. what else would be the determining factors that would make the quality dynamic and not static in the situations you have described?

 

[chad473]

well, the encoding jobs on hulu, and especially netflix can be all over the place. Some netflix movies look close to dvd, others look like a 5 year old divx encode. I find the HD netflix looks pretty good on my 50" display, probably just a tad bit softer than Comcast HD, but with less artifacting.


bottom line though, you will probably notice a difference coming from a 27" crt. It won't look as sharp on a larger screen.

 

[Citivas]

It will vary by plasma and there are different chips and programs they use for how the convert the content to their native resolution. Some handle it better than others, which is why SD television programming looks worse on some plasmas than others, even if HD looks great on both. I have both Panasonic and a Samsung plasmas at home, for example, and my SD programming and Netflix streaming looks better on the Samsung than the Panasonic. This just happens to be a strength of Samsung -- better display of lower than HD res content.


You are lucky with your Internet provider BTW. Where I live in Central NJ Comcast is worked up about people streaming video with Netflix or Hulu (because their POV is it uses a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and they aren't getting a piece of the revenue and it takes away from people paying for the TV service) so they setup the network to detect any streaming from those sites and they throttle the bandwidth down for them to make them almost unwatchable. So if I consistently average 7-9 mbps in general and can meter it before and after stream, the moment Netflix turns on it reduces to 1-2 mbps and the ping time increases to a crazy 5,000-10,000 ms. Since Netflix is forced to do the lowest resolution, it is only using a modest bandwidth so that doesn't account for it. The instant Netflix is turned off, my full bandwidth restores. And they started doing to a couple months ago -- it was fine until then. They suck. This is exactly why network neutrality matters.

 

[chrisherbert]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Citivas /forum/post/18248792


It will vary by plasma and there are different chips and programs they use for how the convert the content to their native resolution. Some handle it better than others, which is why SD television programming looks worse on some plasmas than others, even if HD looks great on both. I have both Panasonic and a Samsung plasmas at home, for example, and my SD programming and Netflix streaming looks better on the Samsung than the Panasonic. This just happens to be a strength of Samsung -- better display of lower than HD res content.

Since he's using a PC to stream it, the plasma won't be doing the scaling.


I've found Netflix streaming to look pretty poor, generally. It's not just about bandwidth, it also seems like they usually use old transfers.

 

[dman777]

so, bottom line then...the netflix streaming will look noticeably better on my 27 sony crt tv?