The wife says the required BD-Live disc arrived in the mail today, so I guess I’ll know in a few hours, but I’m impatient - has anyone tried this yet?
The HD streaming has me excited, but I’m hoping my wi-fi connection proves fast enough - has anyone tested using wifi?
This may be the final straw that pushes me to run CAT5, or get some other hard-wired solution.
Mods, feel free to move this to Cafe Society or IMHO if you feel so compelled.
I haven’t, but I did try streaming a DVD over WiFi, and the quality did suffer a lot. Of course, it was 802.11b, and I’m not sure there wasn’t interference from portable phones in the area.
I ran a couple old TV shows last night. It’s no worse than when I was streaming through my MacBook hooked up to the TV through the VGA input. I haven’t tried HD streaming yet.
Well, I had a chance to play with it, and I must say I’m quite satisfied.
Previously, we were streaming Netflix to an HTPC over 802.11g and we were not thrilled with the quality - we have a low-power single-core AMD processor that came highly recommended on Newegg for use in HTPC’s. We stream DVDs wirelessly to the same system from our home server in VOB format, and the quality is fine, so I thought that it was the network overhead from Netflix using up most of our wi-fi bandwidth. I guess I had assumed if our PC was fast enough to render streamed DVDs, Netflix shouldn’t be a problem.
Well, the PS3 obviously has a lot more processing power than a low-end Athlon 64, which must be the deciding factor, because the quality on PS3 is outstanding. We watched Groundhog Day in standard def, and it looked near-DVD quality, while streaming it to the PC usually gives us a blocky mess. I could swear that old Monty Python eps look better than they do on standard def TV, and all the other standard def stuff was equally impressive.
As for HD, I tried an episode of CSI, and it looked great. Tried some other HD content, and the only complaint I have was on an episode of Star Trek: TOS in HD. I saw some very odd motion artifacts - horizontal banding that appeared during fast movement, that I haven’t seen in other titles.
The interface is much different than on a PC - you can’t search for specific titles that you haven’t added to your Instant Queue. However, you can search through the top 100 movies in a wide array of genres, and browse similar titles to other titles in your instant queue. Honestly, if we have a hankering to watch something specific, I can pop into the PS3’s browser and add a title to my instant queue that way. Aside from a bit of slowdown populating the different categories while browsing, it’s a decent interface, and the experience is equally comfortable with a controller or BluRay remote.
As I’m typing this, I tried out some Netflix titles on my main PC just to double-check my impressions. My main PC is decently fast - a dual-core Athlon X2, decent video card, and a hardwired internet connection - yet the quality on the PS3 is significantly better. So the PS3 appears to handle wi-fi streaming just fine. And I’m a very happy camper.
Quality: We watched an episode of the Office (in HD) that we’d previously watched on our Roku box. It looked the same, both streaming over wireless, both in pretty HD. It took a little longer to load up the episode to start on PS3, but otherwise, neither way had any skips or gaps during playback.
Features: I was excited that it would allow me to add to, and edit, the queue right in the interface, instead of using the computer, from what I’d heard. Unfortunately, adding means “adding by the suggestions they give, with no way to add your own choices.” And editing my queue, other than deleting items I already have in the queue (which I could already do on the Roku), appears to be fairly weak.
Other: It wasn’t clear that the disc will have to be in the PS3 every time you want to use it. They made it sound like you stick in the disc, do an install, and then you’re good to go to just stream whenever, right from your couch.
Overall, I’m going to have to mess with it a bit more, maybe do some side-by-side loading comparisons on items with a timer to see if it really was slower than Roku, or just felt like it, and ultimately decide whether I’d rather have the Roku box as another slot on the main TV, or the ability to also stream up in the bedroom. It’s nice to have it, but not nice how it’s more limited than the 360s get.
Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled initially that the PS3 Netflix integration doesn’t allow for full title searching/browsing/queue additions - it only allows for browsing/adding what seems to be the top titles in each genre/suggestion category they provide. However, the PS3 has a decent browser only a couple button clicks away, through which I can add titles; not optimal, but not too horribly inconvenient.
And I realized last night how inconvenient it is to have to swap discs out to start Netflix streaming, after finishing a Rome disc and wanting to go to Netflix - dammit, I don’t want to leave my couch!! I’ve taken extreme measures to ensure I don’t have to physically touch any of my equipment - got the Harmony remote fully programmed, have the Sony BD remote, got an HDMI switch, and everything. But it’s all for naught once I have to get up to swap a disc.
But, to give Sony the benefit of the doubt, I assume (and have heard rumors) that they are working on these issues, and hopefully a subsequent update will add a local option in the video menu run from the HDD, that will allow more robust searching/integration with the browser.
Still, I’m quite impressed they were able to cook up a solution using BD-live to allow access to get this out the door so quickly. And it’s not exactly half-baked - the quality is way up there (better than Silverlight on PC, at any rate) and the interface, while a little laggy and fairly limited, could have been a lot worse.
I just now requested my disk to be sent to me. 
I can’t wait.
Hmmm… I wonder if I’m doing something wrong. Because my picture quality absolutely sucks. I didn’t try an HD show yet, so maybe that’s the issue.
Munch, what kind of connection do you have? And did you try a movie, or TV title?
I’m connected wirelessly. I tried connecting through the wired connection back when I set the PS3 all up, but for some reason, the router didn’t like that (it’s right behind the TV, so I don’t have to worry about cords all over the place).
I tried both Jim Gaffigan’s Beyond the Pale, and Step Brothers. (Please don’t judge me.)
Hey, man, the Gaffster more than makes up for the travesty that is Step Brothers.
All together now. . . “Hoooott Pockets!”
Has anyone gotten Remote Play with a PSP to work to stream Netflix?
I ordered the disc last week and have been experimenting with different hook ups and movies since then and I have to say it’s surpassed all of my expectations.
I initially tried the wireless but the connection was too inconsistent, (horribly pixelated and it was constantly pausing to buffer the video), but I dug out one of my old network cables to run the PS3 directly to the router and it’s worked marvelously. I get high throughput now and it looks great, (I average around 2.5 to 3 Mbs). The video quality is obviously dependent on the original source, but the streaming absolutely approaches DVD quality with enough bandwidth. I watched two things tonight, the first was a couple of episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, a cheesy action/adventure show from the mid 90’s that happens to be a guilty pleasure of mine. The video looked low res and a little muddy, but the DVD’s do as well as it was shot on a relatively low budget with 16mm cameras. It looked comparable to the commercial DVD release.
I also watched Chaplin and was very happy with the quality there. It was bright and clear and appeared to be of a higher resolution as expected.
As others have noted the internal browser only lists a limited amount of entries in each category, leaning toward the newly available. The max appears to be 100 titles in each category. There’s tons of stuff available that’s not listed, you have to add them to your queue to see them, but that’s a minor problem.
There’s rumors that Sony will be including the streaming functionality in a future update and that the disc is only a stopgap measure, but nothings been confirmed as far I know. The disc though is working fabulously right now and I’m quite happy with it. The only caveat is that it seems to need a constant broadband connection in the neighborhood of 1 to 2 Mbps which some wi fi connections may struggle with. Consider digging out those old cables if you have them.
I’ll do it. Any suggestions on what I should anticipate having to troubleshoot? I couldn’t get the router to recognize my PS3 last time.
Munch, what type of wi-fi router do you use - b or g?
Huh. I have no idea - whatever is standard for ATT U-Verse. I’ll have to check.
Just checked their website - looks like their wi-fi gateway uses 802.11g, but has no external antenna, which I imagine reduces range and signal strength. I’ve got a Linksys router that puts out a good strong signal all 'round the house, which may have made the difference; we’ve also got a Comcast 20Mb/s connection too, which gives us much more overhead to accomodate for fluctuations in WAN speed.
I’m hoping you can get a solid connection going - it’s well worth it. Last night we watched the LOST Pilot, and I swear the quality was better than watching it over HD cable!
Okay - got the wired connection going. Queued up the Lost pilot. It’s labeled “HD”. If this is HD, why is it in 4:3? Didn’t Lost begin airing in 16:9?
It was in 16:9 for me - but if I recall correctly, I had to fiddle with the PS3 settings a bit when I first started using the Netflix disc.
Hit the triangle button, then find the “AV options” and see what you have to work with there. You may also want to turn “Upscaling” on in the XMB video options (if it’s not on already).
Good to know. That’s the one thing I hate about the PS3 bluray system - that damned menu.
And I totally need to reconfigure my Harmony remote since I got my new TV - everything’s out of whack.