Netflix has just announced that with a $99 gadget and a standard (3 discs at once) subscription you can watch unlimited movies on your standard TV screen.
Gotchas: only 15% of their collection is available in the “watch now” category, although this is the same sub-collection that they have been offering for a while to stream to your computer. It’s still a pile of flicks and not just junk, either.
You need a fast internet connection (quality depends on how fast). 3Mb/sec should provide DVD quality. You need an Ethernet socket.
Good stuff: No additional charges, no limits on how many to watch, no interference with your disc queue. You can even watch 3 movies simultaneously (on 3 TV sets) as long as your Internet connection can handle it.
No data is stored locally, although I am intrigued by the possibility of plugging the Netflix player into a VCR or DVD-R and recording the stream. In case you are wondering why I would do that, I happen to know of at least 2 movies that are available as “watch now” but not on disc, so that would be the only way to preserve them permanently.
Hmmm, I have Netflix and Xbox Live, very intriguing. I was disappointed that I couldn’t stream movies over my computer (apparently, my computer is too good or something) so this would be great!
I’ve been able to stream Netflix movies thru my computer quite successfully, and since my computer’s audio is connected to a decent hi-fi, it sounds great. But I don’t have a video output from my computer to my regular TV – if I did, I wouldn’t need this box. Watching movies on my computer isn’t bad, but the TV is bigger and has better sofas in front of it.
So I guess my choice is to get a video card for my computer with a TV output or one of these boxes. Not much difference, really.
I’ve watched a couple of movies this way. I do have a computer set up to play on the TV. Personally I didn’t like the quality that they put out so I stopped watching them live.
With it I can browse all the watch now stuff on my TV, add/delete things to my DVD queue, Add/delete movies on my watch now queue, and even download “watch now” movies for later viewing. Works with Vista media center and also streams to to the xbox 360.
The selection is better for foreign and independent films. No new movies or blockbusters yet. the quality depends on the source some times. The better rips are just short of DVD quality, which is fine for watching the kind of movies they have on there. I hope they increase the quality and even allow high def content through. Would be nice.
I’m satisfied with just my laptop, my 42" TV, and an HDMI cable, using the full-screen version of the in-browser viewer. Not a DVD-quality experience, but much better than I thought streamed internet video would look on a sizable screen.
You don’t like DVD quality or you don’t have a fast enough Internet connection to get it?
The max speed Netflix transmits is claimed to be DVD quality, and they say a 3Mb/sec thruput is adequate. Mine is faster (10Mb), and it looks like DVD quality to me, on my system (and I’m pretty sensitive to quality and defects).
See previous note. What speed is your connection?
See previous notes. What speed is your connection?
{sigh} See previous notes. What speed is your connection?
The selection of movies available to watch now isn’t necessarily the stuff we want to watch. The TV is mostly used for kids stuff - and there hasn’t been a lot of kids stuff available. New releases on it are rare. You need to put the movie in your queue on your PC in order to see it available through the Roku box. And it was difficult to set up - but Brainiac4 got it there eventually.
But quality seems fine - we have broadband cable and there isn’t any stuttering.
It’s not the speed that was a problem, on my screen it looked like a home VHS movie that had been copied a couple of times. One of the other problems that I had was there was no menu. I think it was Dexter and I had missed one of the episodes on the DVD. I decided to watch it online instead of getting the DVD again. It started on episode 1 and I couldn’t find a way to watch the second one.
As I said, I liked the idea behind it, but the two or three movies that I’ve watched on it just didn’t look even close to DVD quality. I’m guessing that it could have been the movies that we chose, but I can wait for the mail.
Did you compare what you saw with the actual DVD? It’s possible the “original” was crappy, too.
I’ve also noticed some problems with their speed detection routines. With a 10Mb/sec dl speed, you would think that I exceed their “minimum for DVD quality” spec by a wide margin, but for a while, they were feeding me the #2 quality (of 3 possible). When I complained, some tests were run and working with my ISP (Charter) and Netflix, we ironed out the problems. (The problems were Charter’s signal was pretty shitty and they wouldn’t admit it at first.) So perhaps you have a similar problem. (“Latency” was the watchword in my case.)
As far as “no menu”, Netflix’s shows appear to be devoid of any, also missing any extras that might be on the original disk. All you get is the movie and nothing but the movie.
But you should be able to fast-forward, even in jumps, to a midpoint of any one show. I’ll admit this suffers from two drawbacks: you don’t know where to jump to without trial & error, and you may have to wait while it is re-buffered each time you jump ahead or behind.
It seems like Netflix’s download software doesn’t download the entire work, but buffers only a few minutes ahead of what you are watching. If you pause, the download pauses, too. This saves them overall net bandwidth, but means that VCR-type controls of FF and RW are not ideal. I’m sure it is a compromise for them as well as us.