I currently have Dish Network HD, hooked to a HD LCD TV, this also provides standard def to another TV, HD DVR (records in both HD and SD) included. I also have two other TVs also on Dish but on a separate DVR box. I have the Super Dooper package (not sure of its actual name). Recently I’ve been considering dropping most of the DISH premium channels in favor of Netflix for Wii. The reason I’m contemplating this change is that overall I don’t watch the premium channels all that much. We are big movie watchers but only on weekends, and we really don’t follow much of the original series appearing on HBO and Showtime. On the other hand I like having NFL Redzone which I think requires me to have a sports package. We are also regular watchers of most of the basic channels like USA, TBS and the like enjoying most of those offerings better than we’re getting from the big 4-5. I figure changing to something like this would save money in the long run and fit better into how we watch TV. Anybody doing something similar? I’ve never used Netflix but it sounds cool, so any details you can provide will be invaluable.
Well, what are your priorities? I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking here, or what your end-goal is. Are you trying to completely rid yourself of a cable bill, or are you just trying to get rid of the premium channels? And what do you mean by premium channels - is it HBO/Showtime/etc., is it an HD package, or is it anything that isn’t ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/PBS?
Well ultimately I’d like to save money. I know I’m not getting my moneys’ worth out of my current set up, even though I can’t point to s specific complaint other that I have a ton of movie channels I only seem to watch sporadically. I consider premium channels to be HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, TMC, and Starz. If I go add them up I’d say they represent a good chunk of change and a lot of realestate on my box. But I’d be hard pressed to say I watch any of these channels regularly.
Cut 'em off. Netflix’s Watch Instantly doesn’t have a gigantic library, but it’s big and getting bigger every week.
This is going to depend on your tolerance for lower quality video. Even with a fast internet connection, Netflix streaming from my PC is nowhere near the quality of HD digital cable, or even DVD quality. I’ve heard that the Netflix HD streaming is around DVD quality, but you have to have a device that supports it (Xbox 360 and Gold membership or PS3). I don’t think the Wii is on that list.
And a lot of their “who’s ever heard of this movie?” movies are surprisingly good. I love Netflix.
I have a Wii and two TiVos with Netflix access. The TiVos also have Amazon Video on Demand. The video and audio quality, in order from worst to best is:
[ol]
[li]Netflix on Wii[/li][li]Netflix on TiVo[/li][li]Amazon on TiVo[/li][/ol]
Honestly, I see a pretty big gap between each step. Netflix on Wii looks much worse than Netflix on the TiVo, and Netflix in general looks much worse than Amazon (including the “HD” Netflix titles). There’s also more variation in Netflix, in my experience – some of the titles look really horrible (note that this is on a 52" LCD; it might be less noticeable on a smaller TV). None of them are as good as the better cable HD channels (some of the cable channels are really compressed and can look worse than Amazon, but the premium cable channels blow Amazon out of the water).
Slotting DVD into that is kind of hard. Our DVD players are better than average for upscaling (on our main TV we have an Oppo Blu-Ray player and on our bedroom TV we have an older Oppo DVD player. Both are excellent at upscaling SD DVDs). I guess I’d say on average with our DVD players, a DVD falls somewhere between Netflix and Amazon on TiVo, but there’s enough variation in each category that there’s not a clear delineation.
On a more practical level, I almost never find Amazon’s video quality to be objectionable (meaning that it’s bad enough that I notice it when I’m not specifically looking at it), and I’d guess I find Netflix’s quality to be objectionable about 25% of the time. The bigger problem with Netflix is that I find the streaming isn’t as reliable as I’d like. Many, many times I’ve had movies stop in the middle because the stream was interrupted for some reason. This happens much more often at peak times. I have a very reliable and fast home Internet connection, and I’ve heard similar complaints from a lot of other people, so I don’t think the problem is on our end. Amazon actually downloads the file to local storage and plays it from there, so it tends to be more reliable. However, I will admit I haven’t used Netflix much recently because I got so annoyed with it. It may have improved.
- 1080p television
- Over-the-air TV with giant DB-8 antenna
- $120 Blu-ray player (with surround sound if you can afford it)
- Rent from Netflix, Blockbuster, and Redbox