Q: Streaming Netflix players

[crazybrit]

I'm upgrading my setup. Time for the 1991 Sony 19" to go

Going to be getting a 46" LCD and BlueRay player. I'd like to be able to stream Netflix content.

Read some negative reviews regarding the PQ of the LG BD300. Reviews of the Samsung BD-P2500 seem better but I noticed a review comment on the Amazon website regarding the Samsung which said "You have to log into netflix and cue movies on your PC, and then you can watch them on your TV through the player"

Can anyone elaborate on the Samsung Netflix UI? My understanding of the Roku is that you have to edit your Instant Queue on your PC but you can select from the queue on screen using the Roku remote. From reading the blurb on the LG I got the impression it was the similar to the Roku. The Amazon comment makes it sound like there is no onscreen selection for the Samsung and you need to start the streaming on your PC which sounds annoying .... but I could be reading too much into the Amazon comment.

Second question. Does anyone know if any of the players have the sufficient hardware juice to be able to stream HD should Netflix release it?

[Yodas Father]

If you want to stream Netflix in HD, I'd go with that "other" console... the one whose name shall not be uttered.

[crazybrit]

Originally Posted by Yodas Father

If you want to stream Netflix in HD, I'd go with that "other" console... the one whose name shall not be uttered.

I don't want to get a game system.

Anyways, I'm more interested in the whole non-HD UI issue. Whether the Samsung requires you to queue the streaming of a video on your PC or whether you can view your instant queue and select on screen. None of the stores have a functioning setup to see this.

Someone's gotta have one.

[Yodas Father]

From my understanding, you have to manage the queue via your PC for all Neflix players.

[crazybrit]

Originally Posted by Yodas Father

From my understanding, you have to manage the queue via your PC for all Neflix players.

Read the OP again. I realize you have to manage the queue on the PC. The comment regarding the Samsung player on Amazon made it sound like you had to select a video to watch (start the streaming process) also on your PC (the "cue movies" comment).

The Roku website states you can select from your queue on screen (start streaming). The LG site is less clear but from comments I've read, I think it's the same as the Roku.

[Blu-Ron]

Originally Posted by Yodas Father

If you want to stream Netflix in HD, I'd go with that "other" console... the one whose name shall not be uttered.

Nothing wrong with the 360.

[Yodas Father]

Sorry. I'm not sure about that. I have the Roku and the 360 and I highly recommend either for Netflix fans.

[andyman1970]

I wouldn't stream video via Netflix or any other service. Why? one word BUFFERING!!! There is nothing more annoying then to be watching something and then have it pause for as long as 5 minutes due to the streaming needing to catch up with what you've watch. This seems to happen all the time and the pauses seem to last longer then the watched content. This happens every few minutes so beware. You'll spend more time staring at a still screen then watching the video.

[Yodas Father]

As soon as our internet infrastructure catches up, it'll be great.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13184/1066/

"In the test conducted by the CWA, the United States averaged 1.9 megabits per second.

Currently, Japan, the number one country in the world, has an average broadband download time of 61 megabits per second. South Korea is second with 45.6 megabits per second. Sweden is third at 18, France, fourth at 17, and Canada fifth at 7 megabits per second."

[crazybrit]

Originally Posted by andyman1970

I wouldn't stream video via Netflix or any other service. Why? one word BUFFERING!!!

Great but this wasn't the question I asked Streaming works fine on my PC, not had any buffering issues.

So ........ back to the OP (original post).

Anyone got a Samsung who's using it to stream NF? If so, could you answer the question.

Thanks much!

[SVTRacer]

OK. The only thing you have to use the PC for is to set up your instant viewing queue, and to activate instant viewing in your account for your player (the player gives you an activation code during set up). Once this is done all the movies in your instant viewing queue will be displayed on the Samsung Netflix UI. You just cycle through them and select the one you want to watch.

[billypoe]

I love my Samsung 2500. I've only watched one movie where there were pauses because of buffering. I recommend this to anyone upgrading. It decodes every type of audio out there, plus you can't go wrong with 7.1 analog outs!

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by Yodas Father

From my understanding, you have to manage the queue via your PC for all Neflix players.

i do that for my 360, I really enjoy it. I just hope maybe sony and blockbuster do theirs that would make it even better

[gr3y]

Hey, I have a TIVO HD and used this system fomr the 1st time last night.

Yes, you must add movies from the PC to your "watch instantly que" for them to show up in the list of movies in your players list.

No, you do not start the movie watching on pc and then trasnfer over to the bluray to continue. You just simply select the movie in the que from the netflix menu on the bluray player and watch it.

As i've only used this system for around 3 days, It seemed cool. I only got a "buffering" message once and it was just a second. I haven't had any issues with the thing being slow. I viewed HD content and I can say I was impressed. I did see a lil 'digital noise' from the bandwidth dropping i'm assuming, but it wasn't anything crazy.

I'd give it a try, see what ya think.

[crazybrit]

Originally Posted by billypoe

I love my Samsung 2500. I've only watched one movie where there were pauses because of buffering. I recommend this to anyone upgrading. It decodes every type of audio out there, plus you can't go wrong with 7.1 analog outs!

I picked up a Samsung 46" LCD last night and also got the BDP2500. Firmware upgrade was easy.

Two questions:

1) Does your player hum? Mine is quite noisy and it's actually distracting during low volume portions of a movie. If it's normal I'll just have to learn to deal with it. I'm talking while streaming a Netflix movie, so the disc transport isn't the issue. Sounds like the power supply.

2) Any net resources out there which talk about methods of improving the picture quality? Also, what is the quality bar trying to indicate? Quality of the encoding, streaming, both? I'm not even sure how to interpret the bars? Grey at the right side, white at the left. Some movies were good, others had bad digital noise. 7mb/s DSL.

[billypoe]

Originally Posted by crazybrit

I picked up a Samsung 46" LCD last night and also got the BDP2500. Firmware upgrade was easy.

Two questions:

1) Does your player hum? Mine is quite noisy and it's actually distracting during low volume portions of a movie. If it's normal I'll just have to learn to deal with it. I'm talking while streaming a Netflix movie, so the disc transport isn't the issue. Sounds like the power supply.

2) Any net resources out there which talk about methods of improving the picture quality? Also, what is the quality bar trying to indicate? Quality of the encoding, streaming, both? I'm not even sure how to interpret the bars? Grey at the right side, white at the left. Some movies were good, others had bad digital noise. 7mb/s DSL.

Check the PM I sent you.

Also, Netflix just doesn't have the best quality--it's not even dvd quality. I have streamed movies at work at 100Mbs and it's still bad quality. So, what you're getting on the Samsung is as good as it's gonna get.

[brettallica]

Not to thread-hijack too much here and lead this topic astray, but...

Have you ever considered going with a micro-ATX computer to do your Netflix streaming? You can build these home theater PCs (HTPC) pretty inexpensively nowadays, and all the high-def support you need is available if you get the right motherboard and other miscellaneous hardware (cpu, RAM, video card, etc.).

Just a suggestion, because if you have a computer in your entertainment center, you're also opening yourself up for more flexibility, such as watching other online content -- like from various websites like CW or USA or whatever (not sure if you're into that, but some people are). You also get to watch movies that you may have downloaded to iTunes or your local hard drive via BitTorrent or similar peer-to-peer file-sharing program -- totally legally of course! You can also play your iTunes music through your home theater this way. The list goes on and on, as we all know computers are pretty open with regard to what they can do.

I use my computer for all of these things, in addition to some other cool things like running my old-school video game console emulators, playing a yule log video on there, and running slide shows of family pictures and such. We've also got a video camera for home videos that shoots in 16:9, which is pretty cool for the HD set. Not that the camera is HD or anything, but it's nice to maintain that ratio instead of having the 4:3 to 16:9 stretchies. We've got the camera's dock hooked up 24/7 to the HTPC, so whenever a new video is shot, we dock the camera upload it to the PC... so we have the ability to watch our videos on our TV through the Windows Media Player interface, instead of holding onto the camera while it's plugged into your TV via composite cables and trying to run the videos that way (which is a pain if any of you have experience with that).

Anyway, just some ideas!

[crazybrit]

Originally Posted by brettallica

Not to thread-hijack too much here and lead this topic astray, but...

Yeah, I had (I'm a Linux kernel developer by trade).

I'd really like to have a single PC which could act as DVR, stream digital content plus Netflix. I may sometime break down and get cable/satellite and this is where the whole thing breaks down, encrypted content wise though maybe Windows Media has something proprietary to handle this. I have an old SlimServer which streams MP3s, be nice to integrate this too.

But yeah, it's a good idea. There's no magic in the Roku box.

But for right now I'm pretty happy with the BDP2500. Crazy that it's going up in price, must be due to the Netflix addition. I found something Googling where you could pick one up for $230 early November. It was $299 at Amazon a couple weeks ago and now it's $330 odd.

I'm still annoyed about the transformer hum from the unit, not sure if mine is faulty or this is just normal. I have an old 1920 house so I'm only 6' away from it so that doesn't help .... it's noticable (to me) when quiet passages are playing.

Thanks

Tony

[brettallica]

That's cool, man. I was just throwing some ideas out there in case you wanted to explore some other options for the streaming aspect of things. I have little confidence in how a BR player would pull this off, but then again I've never seen it in action either. It just seems like a computer would be better served for that purpose, and like I was saying, you get more out of a computer because you can do more things... but not everyone wants another component in their entertainment center either!

The PC/DVR/server idea is pretty cool. I've always wanted to try building one of those. The only thing about that setup that kills it for me is that would probably involve a pretty seriously-sized computer, which I definitely don't want in my entertainment center. Hence, I'm pretty OK with my current setup. My next HTPC (for which I'm acquiring parts and pricing now), will have a video card with inputs that will accept a DVR (or any video source) output, so I could record shows from there if I so desired and store them on the computer's hard drive -- then edit them later. I've got a buddy who just started his career as a sports anchor on a local television station, and I'm recording his broadcasts and saving them for him; eventually I'll be posting those online. But the way I'm doing it now is pretty laborious: playing the recorded program from the DVR into my DVD recorder, which involves stopping and starting the DVR and DVD recorder continuously each time I'm "taping" (I guess we shouldn't call it "taping" anymore) an airing. Ideally I'd just set it up so that it's all computer-based and simpler to modify than what I'm doing now.

[Red Hood]

Originally Posted by andyman1970

I wouldn't stream video via Netflix or any other service. Why? one word BUFFERING!!! There is nothing more annoying then to be watching something and then have it pause for as long as 5 minutes due to the streaming needing to catch up with what you've watch. This seems to happen all the time and the pauses seem to last longer then the watched content. This happens every few minutes so beware. You'll spend more time staring at a still screen then watching the video.

Never had any buffering or stopping issues with my roku. I have a 6mb dsl connection and get 4 stars and keep it that way through what I'm watching. What are you having these issues on, netflix streaming or just streaming content in general?