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Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 09-16-2008, 12:51 PM:
 
Anyone try streaming Netflix "watch instantly" programming directly to their TV using the Roku box? If so what are your thoughts about the quality? Thanks.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-02-2008, 08:15 AM:
 
Yah....in short, it sucks big time.

First off, I will make no bones that I admit a strong bias out of the starting gate as I LOATH watching movies in front of a computer display, period. But that said, this system has a lot more for you to hate about it.

Let's start with your internet service. If you have anything but the high end connections, say high-end cable broadband (not there low or even medium speeds) or fiberoptics or even T1 (no one has that at home, right), then you might as well not waste your time. No question, my DSL just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to playing these streams. And I do have the premium DSL service and my speed is, as they are fond of saying, "approximately" 3MBps (your speeds may vary). It works fine for my needs, until I try to run one of these Instant Movies. Let me put it this way -- if you didn't have epilipsy before you started watching this stuttering, halting crap, you will after about 10 minutes of it. Stick it out for another 15min and you'd better have someone close by with a pencil handy to stick in your mouth because you'll be on the floor taking a grand mal.

We know that DSL efficiency is based on the distance from the central office, and I have never run any diagnostics to see what speed I am actually getting, but I consider my setup typical. So if this is the way it works in a typical household in the field, then the instant movie service is going nowhere until service speeds increase -- we're planning on getting fiberoptic service as soon as that is available and hopefully that would solve this stuttering, jerky movement....but there are more problems.

Even if the picture were streaming without halting every 5 seconds, next comes the super amount of compression that they must be using. I mean, it's just garbage blocky -- and forget about any fast movement. Putting that aside, as if anyone could tolerate that crap, next comes the actual display parameters of brightness and contrast.

Even though the Netflix image window software is actually running on top of a virtual Windows Media Player, for some stupid reason, they have included none of the Media Player controls, so you can't adjust anything -- neither brightness nor contrast. The picture is simply WAY too dense generally in normal scenes and nearly invisible in the dark scenes, and there is nothing you can do to fix it. In short, the Netflix guys get a resounding F - and send them to dentention while we're at it.

Even if someone were mentally retarded enough to actually be inclined to watch an entire movie in front of a computer display, Netflix Instant Movie still should never have gotten off the drawing board.

I will say that I did watch one of their movies at work where we are connected via a fiberoptic infrastructure and out to the world via T1s. The flow was smoother, none of the image jerkyness and stuttering, but it was still too compressed and blocky and much too dark, like watching 35mm projection where the bulb is totally blackned all around and the reflector is all fogged. If you can put up with that kind of thing.....knock yourself out!
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 10-02-2008, 10:03 AM:
 
And btw, in case you're confused the Roku box is simply a device that streams the same internet feed that you normally would use for watching those movies on your PC and sends it to your TV instead.

And personally, I've seen that the titles on "watch instantly" are kind of hit-or-miss in that some of them look decent and some of them look like someone used a mediocre transfer directly from a VHS. Though I've only seen slight stuttering like Frank's pointing out to (like where the image stops for a few seconds as the dialog continues, then the image goes into super-speed to catch up with the dialog) but overall it's worked ok on my end (and I don't have a slow-ish connection too; YMMV).
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-04-2008, 12:43 AM:
 
I purchased one of those boxes about 3 months ago and I'm pretty happy with the quality of the video. But it's on the 23" flat screen in my bedroom and I mostly use headphones for sound. As long as you have a fast internet connection, the quality is near DVD quality.

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't havea great selection of movies in the Watch Instantly feature. A lot of older titles, a whole lot of B movies and STV titles, and a pretty good selection of TV shows. In fact, they have the current episodes of Heroes the day after it airs on NBC.

I think they may have had a break through recently with the studios because they added a bunch of high profile titles in the last week - No Country for Old Men, Deja Vu, Resident Evil: Extinction, The Santa Clause 3, Alien 3, City Hall, Meet the Robinsons, Hannah Montana 3D, We Own the Night, Across the Universe, 30 Days of Night, and others. A lot of the new stuff seems to be Disney, but there are a few Sony titles.

EDIT
Netflix recently added this section called Starz Play to the Watch Instantly section. They have a boatload of newer movies including the ones mentioned above. If you have a high speed connection, it greatly expands the service. I found it under the Genres' tab in the Watch Instantly section.

[ 10-06-2008, 05:12 AM: Message edited by: Justin Hamaker ]
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-09-2008, 04:06 PM:
 
Jim, you say it's near DVD quality, do I am assuming you don't have the same darkness problem I am experiencing. I doubt that it is my monitor because evrything else looks fine. Even videos like the ABC network shows that you can watch all look bright in their player. The Netflix player just is too dark. Not yours? I wish I could get it fixed as otherwise it would be really convenient. I can easily switch to the top DLS speed, but only if they can solve the brightness problem.
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-10-2008, 02:54 AM:
 
I assume you're talking to me. No, I haven't have any issue with the picture being dark or dim. But I've always been streaming at the highest quality level. I should also mention that I have it configured differently on both my TVs. I have a Roku box for my upstairs set and for my downstairs set I just output the same feed as from my monitor. I think the picture coming from the Roku box is better but that's playing on a 23" TV. The output from the computer is going to a 32".
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-25-2008, 01:10 AM:
 


This is a screen cap from the 10/20/08 episode of Heros. This is playing through a Roku player with the Netflix Watch Instantly feature.

While it doesn't give you a good representation of the image quality, I think you can get an idea of the contrast and colors. I will say the image looks a bit more grainy on my 32" TV than on my smaller set, but I would say it's still better than VHS quality. The quality is also much better than when I was outputting from my PC. I snapped this image with my BlackBerry, I'll see if I can get a better picture with my digital camera in a day or two.

The Roku box costs $99 (about $122 after tax and shipping). The access is free with the Netflix account I already pay for. While it may no match the quality of HDTV or BluRay, I think it's certainly worth what I paid for it. And with the deal they recently made with Starz, they now have plenty of content to make it worth while.

[ 10-25-2008, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Justin Hamaker ]
 

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Posted by Laurie Higgins (Member # 4843) on 10-25-2008, 02:41 PM:
 
We have our TV set up as a second monitor for our computer and we stream Netflix in our browser window and view it on the TV. Netflix wants you to use Internet Explorer but luckily Firefox has a plug in that lets you open a fake IE tab and that is what we view on. We love it!
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-26-2008, 05:35 AM:
 
How is the sound on this? If it can't do multichannel then I wouldn't want to watch any recent movies on it. It would be OK for TV shows and old stuff though.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 10-26-2008, 11:09 AM:
 

quote:

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Netflix wants you to use Internet Explorer but luckily Firefox has a plug in that lets you open a fake IE tab and that is what we view on. We love it!

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quote:

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Samsung came out with a surprising firmware upgrade for its BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players this week! Both players are now capable of playing movies, television shows, and other videos streamed from Netflix, and the BD-P2550 is also able to stream music from the excellent Pandora music service.

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For those that are unaware of one or both services, Netflix offers the ability to watch movies, television shows, and other videos instantly through a streaming player on your PC or via a standalone device, such as the Roku Netflix player, a Blu-ray player from LG, and now these two players from Samsung.

While there isn't any HD content available yet, Netflix does offer a library of 12,000 titles that can be played instantly. In fact, I just used the service recently to watch an episode of CSI: New York and Survivor: Gabon that I missed because of a glitch in DirecTV's HD DVR software that doesn't like my local CBS channel for some reason.

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quote:

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Netflix Rolling Out New Media Player with Mac & Firefox Support Monday

NETFLIX BEGINS ROLL-OUT OF 2ND GENERATION MEDIA PLAYER FOR INSTANT STREAMING ON WINDOWS PCs AND INTEL MACS

Based on Microsoft Silverlight, New Player Features Enhanced Dynamic Streaming, First-Time Use for Macs and Breakthrough Navigation for Fast-Forward and Rewind

LOS GATOS, Calif., October 27, 2008 – Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it has begun the deployment of Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant watching component of the Netflix service and to allow subscribers for the first time to watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.

Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.

“Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”

“Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”

Silverlight was tried and proven this summer as NBCOlympics.com streamed thousands of hours of live and on-demand online video for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

For Macintosh users, the Silverlight player will work only on Intel-based Macs, which currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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There's nothing wrong with Flash at all. Adobe has even opened up huge portions of Flash, PDF and SVG technology to open source interests.

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quote: Allison Parsons

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Ok, now that the Roku is available in HD, is the quality more of a 'dvd' quality? Also, how's the sound quality on one of those?

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quote: Chris Slycord

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And how did adobe open up SVG, a technology they didn't develop? In fact, adobe originally came up with a standard that competed with SVG.

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quote: Frank Angel

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Stick it out for another 15min and you'd better have someone close by with a pencil handy to stick in your mouth because you'll be on the floor taking a grand mal.

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Sorry, just read it and wanted to acknowledge it.
 

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Posted by Allison Parsons (Member # 2728) on 07-20-2009, 09:01 PM:
 
Adam,
Doesn't the Roku stream Amazon's whateverthehelltheyoffer TV shows and movies? Can the Xbox 360 also stream Amazon content. I'm not looking to watch whatever Amazon is offering at the moment...

For $100, I'm not expecting super high quality on video feed, but I don't want it to look like I'm watching a VHS either. My internet connection pretty darn good. I think I might just get one in the next week or two. I'll report back my thoughts if I do.
 

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 07-20-2009, 10:06 PM:
 
You might want to check out www.hackingnetflix.com
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-21-2009, 01:37 AM:
 

quote: Allison Parsons

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For $100, I'm not expecting super high quality on video feed, but I don't want it to look like I'm watching a VHS either. My internet connection pretty darn good. I think I might just get one in the next week or two. I'll report back my thoughts if I do.

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