# I hate, hate, HATE the updated Netflix app!!!



## escrge

Dear TiVo,

Ever since you gave us the "new and improved" Netflix app, it has been nothing short of aggravating to use.

First, it takes a full 6 seconds for video to pause after I've pressed the pause button. This is consistent over all three TiVo Premieres that I own.

Second, Netflix will now adjust the video quality mid-stream. This means that every time the video quality ramps up, my TV will blink out for a few seconds to correct the resolution resulting in the loss of several seconds of the program I'm watching. If I'm experiencing variable network speeds, the video could blink out continuously.

None of these problems ever happened with the old version.

Now I watch Netflix on my two Apple TVs. But I don't have one in the bedroom which means I'm stuck with the crappy TiVo version.

Please fix the app. Or tell Netflix to fix it. Whoever. Just fix it!


----------



## aaronwt

It's working as it is designed. You need to have the TiVo output only one resolution to avoid the re-syncing that occurs with a different resolution output.

The pausing that takes several seconds is working as intended since it's communicating with the servers to pause. Just like from a Cable Company VOD where you are controlling what you are viewing from their servers. There will always be a lag in that situation.

Other devices like the ATV don't have the syncing issue because they are only outputting one resolution. They don't have the ability to output the native resolution like the TiVo can. So the only way to avoid it with the TiVo is to turn off the Native resolution output. Which means you need to set it for only one resolution output like other devices use.


----------



## escrge

Thank you for the tip on the video output. I'm giving that a try. However, the pausing issue didn't exist before they updated the Netflix app. Why in the world would they "design" it to delay a control function??? That's ridiculous.


----------



## moyekj

escrge said:


> Thank you for the tip on the video output. I'm giving that a try. However, the pausing issue didn't exist before they updated the Netflix app. Why in the world would they "design" it to delay a control function??? That's ridiculous.


 The increased UI delays are because they are using Flash HME which is slower than the previously used non-Flash UI. Note that with HME Netflix is actually running on a TiVo server and your TiVo is just acting as a dumb display, so all remote commands have to be relayed to the server and then you have to wait for server to respond and your TiVo to react. All that adds up to delays you are seeing. Flash seems to have added more overhead to the process.


----------



## escrge

Yes, I understand the mechanics in what is going on behind the scenes. I just cannot fathom why any software designer thought this was an improvement. It degrades the overall user experience. 

Video-on-demand is no longer the wave of the future. It's a reality. Poor performance is no longer tolerated. There is no excuse for a poorly designed interface. Especially when its performance is a step down from a previous release.

They got it right on the Apple TV. And now ATV supports Hulu Plus which also performs much faster than TiVo.

I've been a die-hard TiVo supporter since my first Model 1. I've since owned two Model 2s and now have 3 Premieres. But Apple TV is starting to catch up despite the fact that it seems like just a hobby to them at the moment. If they ever get serious and come out with a DVR component, I might just make the switch unless TiVo wakes up.


----------



## Endymion_

aaronwt said:


> It's working as it is designed. You need to have the TiVo output only one resolution to avoid the re-syncing that occurs with a different resolution output.


This can't be correct. I've had a problem that sounds like what the OP describes, certain scenes simply "blank" the video for a moment. I have seen Netflix streams adjust the streaming resolution before on multiple systems, including on the TiVo, both before and after the update. That is not what is occurring when the image blanks. The video signal just stops momentarily at random points of time. Audio continues normally. When the Netflix app is adjusting streaming resolution, this never happens. You see blockier, more pixelated images, macros, etc. On a perfectly solid, stable network connection, the Netflix app will now simply blank the image.

Additionally, I use one of my Premieres with a fixed resolution and the other with a variable resolution. The issue occurs on both units regardless.


----------



## David Knowles

I hate the app as well.

The issues I have are it will cause my Premier to reboot or the pause control does not work at all the only way I have to stop it is too pull the plug.


----------



## rallykeeper

It's been mentioned before, but I'd add the terrible UI implementation of the Instant Queue. (And the inconsistent control scheme on the remote).

You can only see something like 4 shows in your queue at any given time and scrolling to the right is painful.

Plus if you have kids, they also see all the recommendations, recently watched, etc. It makes it really difficult to guide their viewing habits, if they're recommended to watch something you don't want them to watch. (I'll stop my Netflix parent rant there since there's a dozen things wrong with Netflix and TiVo Netflix for parents and kids).

Apple TV has a much better interface -- with at least a dozen Instant Queue shows on the screen at any given time.

Even Sony's built-in TV functionality is better (with just as good as image quality). PS3 is fine as well. I've never used Wii Netflix, but I'm guessing even it's better (albeit at a lower quality).

I agree with the poster that if TiVo starts to lose its ability to perform all aspects of TV viewing (aside from Blu-Ray) at least adequately, it will start to lose its decade + stranglehold on our household. 

What's always made TiVo great is that I never have to use another box or remote. They added Hulu at the right time, they've long had Netflix and they've even supported purchasing through Amazon. These were all decent implementations of these services.

If another provider can get anywhere close to TiVo's core DVR functionality and solidly beat TiVo with the other services, they will finally have a competitor.

All in all, though, this seems like a minor problem. 

TiVo, if you're listening, just fix the Netflix App!!!


----------



## jrtroo

I have complaints about the netflix app, and have made them before. I only point out two things that this rant thread does not seem to address:

1- Netflix is moving to a standard interface. This interface. I prefer it to have a look and feel of the prior one (esp. hitting play to indicate progression and not to pause). Others interfaces are slightly different, but this is more or less what they are working towards.

2- Netflix wrote this interface, not Tivo. So, complaining to Tivo could be somewhat helpful as they surely have communications with Netflix. Some issues are due to how Tivo handles internet connectivity, which are theirs to handle. However, most complaints are rightly pointed to Netflix, who owns the interface and content. 

My point is that posters here should ALSO complain to Netflix. Not that it will change things, but they need some direct feedback from us as users.


----------



## sammydee

I also absolutely love the Netflix UI experience on my Apple TV, and absolutely hate the same experience on my TiVo Premiere. I've abandoned the TiVo for any Netflix usage at this point. 

...Sam


----------



## en sabur nur

I agree. Of all of the Netflix interfaces I've ever seen, I like the Apple TV's the best. I would really like Apple to add a universal search though. Until that happens, the Fanhattan app is my friend.


----------



## abqdan

Being new to TiVo, I was looking forward to both Netflix and HuluPlus apps. I have to say I'm really disappointed in both. The TiVo's interface, with a simple list of the shows I've recorded, is quick and easy to browse. If I go to the Netflix website, I have that same option - a list of my queued movies. But with this App, not only do all the graphics take time to load, but they reduce the screen real estate to a point where just a few movies are shown, and navigation is horrible. It's the same with HuluPlus (except that app seems completely broken at the moment). Overall, the DVR part of TiVo is excellent, but the app experience is awful. And TiVo should have enough influence with these companies to demand some options, like simple list views, in the API - I can't believe they have no control over what Netflix and Hulu give them.


----------



## Arcady

We had to hook up an old TiVoHD in the living room to use Netflix. The one on the Premiere Elite crashes the whole TiVo, which is unacceptable. Even if it didn't crash, it is still too annoying to use.


----------



## sockgap

I've got access to Netflix streaming on PS3, current AppleTV, Wii, a TiVo Premiere and a TiVo series 3.
The worst of the bunch is the TiVo premiere client, which often has no audio and takes forever to start up. Next worse is the old Series 3 client which only plays items already in the instant queue but at least has audio that works. 

The AppleTV is the only one where the playback UI is platform consistent, rather than trying to follow some weird Netflix-only look and feel that sucks.


----------



## zubinh

I dont have a Premiere yet but it seems with all of these complaints I won't be selling my Apple TV after I upgrade. One question though, Is there a way to "disable" all streaming apps in the Premiere so that I never see their logos or have search results include the streaming options? Thanks.


----------



## aadam101

zubinh said:


> I dont have a Premiere yet but it seems with all of these complaints I won't be selling my Apple TV after I upgrade. One question though, Is there a way to "disable" all streaming apps in the Premiere so that I never see their logos or have search results include the streaming options? Thanks.


Yes. There is a setting that allows you to hide them.


----------



## Dan203

I just resubscribed to Netflix the other night to catch up on show I missed a few episodes of. (cheaper for 1 month of Netflix then buying the episodes from Amazon) Anyway the new app is really, really, slow. Entering my user information was painful and when playing a show sometimes it takes 10+ seconds for it to respond to a button press, which makes trick play almost impossible to use. The old one was slow, but not this slow.

Dan


----------



## lujan

aaronwt said:


> It's working as it is designed. You need to have the TiVo output only one resolution to avoid the re-syncing that occurs with a different resolution output.
> 
> ...


I have my Premiere set to only one resolution (1080p) in order to get the highest resolution from the movies streamed from Netflix but it doesn't work. Any HD movie that I watch via Netflix will turn to a blue screen after a few seconds and I don't know if there is some incompatibility between the TiVo and my Mitsubishi TV or my Denon receiver. I've reported it several times but haven't seen a fix. Fortunately, I have a Panasonic blu-ray player that streams the Netflix HD movies just fine.


----------



## Brad Bishop

I've tried the Netflix app on the TiVo. It's close to unusable because of speed. If you want to just skip it, pay the $100 and get an Apple TV or Roku (I assume Roku supports Netflix and is quick).

I can testify that the Apple TV Netflix interface is both nice and quick.

The TiVo Netflix interface is like working with the online world through an interface of molasses.

Also interesting: I remember the CEO of TiVo a few years back giving an interview and telling us all that his vision was that the TiVo was going to be the end-all, be-all interface to getting our video content (cable & internet).

To the CEO: This is a failure. The interfaces are slow as crap and, while not your fault, the end user ends up with Hulu+ and paying for limited shows that he'd otherwise get w/o question via a computer. It's stupid.

TiVo as an interface to the cable company works quite well. TiVo as an interface to anything else is a failure.


----------



## Dan203

I have a PS3 and an XBox that can play Netflix, but it's so much easier to find things on my TiVo and just click Play On Netflix. However the slowness is horrible. The old app was slow too, but wasn't nearly as bad.

Dan


----------



## aaronwt

lujan said:


> I have my Premiere set to only one resolution (1080p) in order to get the highest resolution from the movies streamed from Netflix but it doesn't work. Any HD movie that I watch via Netflix will turn to a blue screen after a few seconds and I don't know if there is some incompatibility between the TiVo and my Mitsubishi TV or my Denon receiver. I've reported it several times but haven't seen a fix. Fortunately, I have a Panasonic blu-ray player that streams the Netflix HD movies just fine.


You can't select just 1080P by itself.. To select 1080P you have to also select at least one other resolution. The TiVo can only pass through 1080P24 content, it can't scale anything to 1080P. You would need to select one resolution that the TiVo can scale to, like 1080i, to help avoid most of the resolution change issues.


----------



## lujan

aaronwt said:


> You can't select just 1080P by itself.. To select 1080P you have to also select at least one other resolution. The TiVo can only pass through 1080P24 content, it can't scale anything to 1080P. You would need to select one resolution that the TiVo can scale to, like 1080i, to help avoid most of the resolution change issues.


Sorry, it is set to both 1080i and 1080p but it still goes to a blue screen every time I select an HD Netflix movie.


----------



## rogmatic

I sometimes lose signal for all channels after using netflix, and I can't get them back without a restart. I have it set on 1080i resolution (the default for my TV), but is there any reason to think the lost signals are related to resolution changes? In other words, is it worth trying different settings?


----------



## lujan

rogmatic said:


> I sometimes lose signal for all channels after using netflix, and I can't get them back without a restart. I have it set on 1080i resolution (the default for my TV), but is there any reason to think the lost signals are related to resolution changes? In other words, is it worth trying different settings?


I've tried 1080i and 720p as well as all of the resolutions but there's no point in using the new application which added 1080p and DD 5.1 if you're not going to use it. In that case, I might as well continue to use the Panasonic BD player to watch HD Netflix movies.


----------



## aaronwt

lujan said:


> Sorry, it is set to both 1080i and 1080p but it still goes to a blue screen every time I select an HD Netflix movie.


Try selecting one resolution. Which has to be something 1080i or lower.

Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


----------



## Globular

I am comforted that I am not the only one with this frigging annoying problem. We have the blanking out problem. The TiVo has also rebooted a few times after becoming unresponsive during Netflix viewing. We even stooped so low as to borrowing DVDs (SD resolution, yeeesh!) of Breaking Bad from the library! 

Yuck-ola.


----------



## lujan

aaronwt said:


> Try selecting one resolution. Which has to be something 1080i or lower.
> 
> Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


I have tried that and it works but you no longer get the HD movies in 1080p and that's the whole reason I went back to the Netflix streaming subscription. I had stopped my subscription because Netflix was doing 720p and stereo forever and once it upgraded to 1080p and DD5.1 I started back. If I changed it to 1080i or lower, there's no point in watching the Netflix HD movies anymore, know what I mean?


----------



## Globular

Netflix seems to be behaving the past few days. No drop-outs, or spontaneous reboots of the TiVo. Has something been fixed on the back-end?


----------



## Lars_J

Globular said:


> I am comforted that I am not the only one with this frigging annoying problem. We have the blanking out problem. The TiVo has also rebooted a few times after becoming unresponsive during Netflix viewing. We even stooped so low as to borrowing DVDs (SD resolution, yeeesh!) of Breaking Bad from the library!
> 
> Yuck-ola.


Do as others have said... Go in to the TiVo video output settings, and check *1080i only* (disable 1080p).

Doing that removed all the Netflix 'blackout' issues for me. I was seeing it consistently at predictable spots on many Netflix videos.

As for the original posters complaint about the Netflix player adjusting quality in the middle of a stream. All Netflix players do that. It is working as designed. The particular issue with this Netflix player is when it switches between 1080p and other formats. (although the severity of the blackout might differ between different TVs, depending on how fast they switch)

After this tweak I am MUCH happier now with this Netflix player compared to the previous one. Sure, it could be faster, but I would not go back to the other one if given a choice.


----------



## Lars_J

lujan said:


> I have tried that and it works but you no longer get the HD movies in 1080p and that's the whole reason I went back to the Netflix streaming subscription. I had stopped my subscription because Netflix was doing 720p and stereo forever and once it upgraded to 1080p and DD5.1 I started back. If I changed it to 1080i or lower, there's no point in watching the Netflix HD movies anymore, know what I mean?


Don't be ridiculous. At Netflix level streaming quality, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is minimal - if even noticeable. This is not Bluray quality.


----------



## David Knowles

Used it early Saturday morning. The show started OK, but then the pause, ff, etc wouldn't work - it just continued to play. I had to pull the plug on the Tivo


----------



## aaronwt

lujan said:


> I have tried that and it works but you no longer get the HD movies in 1080p and that's the whole reason I went back to the Netflix streaming subscription. I had stopped my subscription because Netflix was doing 720p and stereo forever and once it upgraded to 1080p and DD5.1 I started back. If I changed it to 1080i or lower, there's no point in watching the Netflix HD movies anymore, know what I mean?


properly deinterlaced 1080i should look identical to 1080P. But I don't remember if you select only a 1080i output if it's playing the 720P stream and sscaling it up or playing the 1080P24 stream and interlacing for 1080i output.


----------



## lujan

Lars_J said:


> Don't be ridiculous. At Netflix level streaming quality, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is minimal - if even noticeable. This is not Bluray quality.


It is certainly noticeable on my 82" screen and leave the "ridiculous" comments at home. Why should it work correctly on my Panasonic DMP-BDT500 but not on the TiVo?


----------



## mikeyts

lujan said:


> I have tried that and it works but you no longer get the HD movies in 1080p and that's the whole reason I went back to the Netflix streaming subscription. I had stopped my subscription because Netflix was doing 720p and stereo forever and once it upgraded to 1080p and DD5.1 I started back. If I changed it to 1080i or lower, there's no point in watching the Netflix HD movies anymore, know what I mean?


_I_ get the 1080p encode from Netflix with the output resolution set to 1080i-only. (I have tested bandwidth consumption and the TiVo will take the 1080p24 encode when the output is set to 720p only, downconverting it to 720p60 on output; of the devices that I have which stream Netflix--TiVo, PS3, Xbox, Roku 2, 2 Panasonic 3D BD players and a Sony BD player--it's the only which will take the 1080p encode when it can only output 720p, which might be considered a waste of bandwidth).

1080p24 converted to 1080i30 for display is no great degradation of the picture.


----------



## mikeyts

lujan said:


> Why should it work correctly on my Panasonic DMP-BDT500 but not on the TiVo?


The 2012 Panasonic 3D BD players can do something which almost none of the other streamers can, which is output Internet VOD services as 24p. It is a very rare capability and I don't think it can be held against TiVo if they can't do it well.

What would be nice is if the TiVo could convert other formats for output as 1080p24 but it can only pass it through so when something at another format comes through it has to change output formats, which most televisions cannot do smoothly (I'm not sure that any can). Inasmuch as adaptive bit rate streaming is the emerging standard it's a bit problematic, at least for support of services which offer 1080p video.


----------



## mikeyts

There are definitely some bugs and deficiencies in the TiVo Premiere Netflix player not present in other devices with the same UI. For one thing all of my other players pause instantly (I tried Roku 2, PS3, Xbox and the Panasonic BDT220). All of my other players with this interface (PS3 and 3 BD players) return two sets of search results, one for matching titles and one for matching people names (actors, directors, etc). All of my other players with this UI go backward and forward by 4 thumbs at a time in a list (Instant Queue, Recently Watched, etc) with the REW and FF remote commands. I think that there are a couple of other things but they're not coming to mind right now.


----------



## TVCricket

I hated it at first, but now the only things I wish they'd change is adding description when you press Info, ability to scroll up/down the main screen using Channel Up/Down, and adding the feature where the next episode of a tv show can begin playing without backing out of the current episode.


----------



## lujan

mikeyts said:


> _I_ get the 1080p encode from Netflix with the output resolution set to 1080i-only. (I have tested bandwidth consumption and the TiVo will take the 1080p24 encode when the output is set to 720p only, downconverting it to 720p60 on output; of the devices that I have which stream Netflix--TiVo, PS3, Xbox, Roku 2, 2 Panasonic 3D BD players and a Sony BD player--it's the only which will take the 1080p encode when it can only output 720p, which might be considered a waste of bandwidth).
> 
> 1080p24 converted to 1080i30 for display is no great degradation of the picture.


Thanks, I'll try 1080i only and see what happens...


----------



## RangerOne

I wish the replay button worked like in the old version.


----------



## Atomic Buffalo

I want the old version back. It wasn't great, but it was better than the new app.

I don't care why it's slow.
I don't care who wrote it.
I don't care that Netflix wants a consistent interface.

I didn't buy Tivo for Netflix's interface or Netflix's features. I bought it for the Tivo interface. Give me what I paid for. If you're telling me this is what I paid for, I'll never buy a Tivo again.

I gave up watching Netflix on Tivo. Nevermind the stupid faux-iPad navigation, the playback controls are hideous. I'd say they're the worst ever but I think the new YouTube Tivo app might be worse.

I watch Netflix via my Sony TV now, because it works better. (BTW, it also does Amazon Prime.) This is not a good trend, Tivo. Why did I spend hundreds of dollars on you again?

I want the Tivo Experience, not Tivo Excuses.


----------



## moyekj

It would be trivial for TiVo to throw in a link to the old version under Showcases for those who prefer the old version. The old version is still available since it is used for series 3 models. In fact I would probably use both - the new one for searching and adding stuff to the instant queue and figuring out where I left off watching a series, then the old one to actually play titles.


----------



## mikeyts

mikeyts said:


> _I_ get the 1080p encode from Netflix with the output resolution set to 1080i-only...
> 
> 1080p24 converted to 1080i30 for display is no great degradation of the picture.





lujan said:


> Thanks, I'll try 1080i only and see what happens...


BTW, you can check to see whether you're getting the 1080p encode by using "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with bit rate and resolution burned into each of its video encodes. _Lots_ easier than measuring bandwidth consumption .

There are several "Example" clips in Netflix's library but only that one and an 8 hour one at the same framerate has those overlays.


----------



## atmuscarella

Atomic Buffalo said:


> ... Why did I spend hundreds of dollars on you again?


Hopefully because you wanted a DVR. There are zero reasons to buy a TiVo for streaming media.

The only reason someone should be paying for a TiVo is because they want a superior DVR, if someone just wants a streaming media device other solutions are very low cost and superior.


----------



## mikeyts

atmuscarella said:


> Hopefully because you wanted a DVR. There are zero reasons to buy a TiVo for streaming media.
> 
> The only reason someone should be paying for a TiVo is because they want a superior DVR, if someone just wants a streaming media device other solutions are very low cost and superior.


I feel much the same way--TiVo is the best cable & OTA DVR solution on the market and that's pretty much all that I actually use it for. I only recently switched to a Premiere and when I bought my S3 ($650 w/o service, on sale), it didn't have players for Netflix or Amazon or any other commercial video service. I have 6 or 7 other devices which stream Netflix and other services and I primarily use my Roku 2 for the purpose (which, with the addition of VUDU last week, has become my perfect streamer, having full-featured Netflix, Amazon, VUDU, Hulu Plus and HBO Go streaming players).

On the other hand, TiVo uses their products' capability to stream these services to sell them. Given that, people have every right to complain if they're not happy with its streaming players.


----------



## Arcady

My Premiere Elite is showing the old Netflix in the SDUI. But it gives an error when I try to load it. I am getting the same error on a TiVo HD. The HDUI version on the Elite loads, but crashes the box. Now I can't use Netflix on any of my TiVo boxes in the living room.


----------



## tmarkoski

Arcady said:


> My Premiere Elite is showing the old Netflix in the SDUI. But it gives an error when I try to load it. I am getting the same error on a TiVo HD. The HDUI version on the Elite loads, but crashes the box. Now I can't use Netflix on any of my TiVo boxes in the living room.


Switch the menu type to HD on all HD capable Tivos.
There was an update pushed out by TIVO that causes the Netflix App to be unable to connect from the SD menu. It simply won't connect.

If your HD Tivo gets that error, deactivate the unit from Netflix and then reactivate it.

I had this problem yesterday and tried this on whim.
It solved EVERYTHING.

To put it simply, the Netflix App is now incapable of being launched from the SD menu side. This bug falls on the shoulders of both Tivo and Netflix as they both added things to their respective software/firmware that caused this.


----------



## atmuscarella

mikeyts said:


> ...
> On the other hand, TiVo uses their products' capability to stream these services to sell them. Given that, people have every right to complain if they're not happy with its streaming players.


I agree with you that people certainly should expect TiVo and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon ect. to deliver a well functioning streaming app on the Premiere platform and if they don't certainly have the right to complain about.

However there are times when complaining just doesn't do much good and living in reality makes more sense. My reality is that most streaming apps are never going to work well on the Premiere platform (Pandora seems to be the exception). The fix is simple, low cost and works well; just buy a Roku or Apple TV and be done with it.


----------



## moyekj

tmarkoski said:


> To put it simply, the Netflix App is now incapable of being launched from the SD menu side. This bug falls on the shoulders of both Tivo and Netflix as they both added things to their respective software/firmware that caused this.


 Using SD Menus on a Premiere you can launch Netflix from Video on Demand. I would be very upset otherwise.

UPDATE: Hmm. I just checked and now that is no longer working. It certainly used to work as recently as a couple of days ago so something must have changed with TiVo servers to screw things up.


----------



## Madoc Owain

We were using TiVo SD menus as the HD menus on the Premiere are too slow. The streaming video menu reset yesterday to the one from last year, and NetFlix will no longer load. If I switch the interface to the HD menus, it works properly. I hope TiVo pushes a fix for this issue quickly!


----------



## kmitchell

OK, I thought I was going crazy. I just installed a new XL4 and had Netflix up and working yesterday morning. I went to "demo" it to my wife last night and thought the SD streaming menu looked different. Now I can't even start Netflix. A few seconds after I click on "Watch Instantly" I get an error screen that says something about "an unexpected error has occurred... blah, blah, blah". I'll try HD menus but that is not a solution.


----------



## Arcady

I can open Netflix in the HD menus if I want my TiVo to crash and reboot. They need to do one of the following:

1. Fix Netflix so it works in HD or SD menus
2. Restore the previous version so that it works
3. Rename the HD menu item from "Netflix" to "Crash your TiVo" so it is accurate


----------



## mikeyts

atmuscarella said:


> However there are times when complaining just doesn't do much good and living in reality makes more sense.


Yeah, but it makes unhappy people feel a little bit better to vent their anger and frustration (though it's foolish to think that your rant might get them to change anything). I don't argue with them any more; if they ask why things are the way that they are I'll offer an explanation, but I leave the "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this! I don't care why you did it, change it back!" posts alone .



> My reality is that most streaming apps are never going to work well on the Premiere platform (Pandora seems to be the exception).


I don't know; the only one I ever run is Netflix and it works pretty well (I tend to run Pandora on this PC or my Roku). It's lacking a few features of the other players with this UI (notably move by 4 thumbs in the browser with REW and FF and people search) and TiVo's ability to output 1080p24 but not to convert other video formats into 1080p24 confuses people and makes it best to run in 1080i-only, but otherwise it seems to work well.


----------



## kmitchell

Arcady said:


> I can open Netflix in the HD menus if I want my TiVo to crash and reboot. They need to do one of the following:
> 
> 1. Fix Netflix so it works in HD or SD menus
> 2. Restore the previous version so that it works
> 3. Rename the HD menu item from "Netflix" to "Crash your TiVo" so it is accurate


Wow, Switched to the HD menus and get a reboot as well when I try to open Netflix.


----------



## aaronwt

atmuscarella said:


> I agree with you that people certainly should expect TiVo and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon ect. to deliver a well functioning streaming app on the Premiere platform and if they don't certainly have the right to complain about.
> 
> However there are times when complaining just doesn't do much good and living in reality makes more sense. My reality is that most streaming apps are never going to work well on the Premiere platform (Pandora seems to be the exception). The fix is simple, low cost and works well; just buy a Roku or Apple TV and be done with it.


They all work well on the Premiere boxes. Of course the navigation could be a little faster but otherwise they typically work without issue on my Premiere and two Elites.

Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


----------



## lujan

mikeyts said:


> BTW, you can check to see whether you're getting the 1080p encode by using "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with bit rate and resolution burned into each of its video encodes. _Lots_ easier than measuring bandwidth consumption .
> 
> There are several "Example" clips in Netflix's library but only that one and an 8 hour one at the same framerate has those overlays.


Thanks for the great link!! I tried it with 1080i/1080p selected on the TiVo box and the screen went blue after a few seconds on the "Example_Short_23.976" movie. I then changed the video setting to 1080i only, and went back to the "Example_Short..." movie and everything went fine. These are the settings I got:

Bitrate: 4800 kbps
RES: 1920X1080
PAR: 1:1

I guess this is the best you can get, right?


----------



## mikeyts

lujan said:


> These are the settings I got:
> 
> Bitrate: 4800 kbps
> RES: 1920X1080
> PAR: 1:1
> 
> I guess this is the best you can get, right?


Yep--that's 1080 res at (as the title of the "film" suggests) 24 fps (23.976, to be exact ). There are several of those "example" clips (just search Netflix for "example") but only that one and "Example 8 Hour 23.976" have those bit-rate/resolution overlays on their component encodes. (Strangely, those test clips appear to be the only items in Netflix's streaming library with the word "example" in their titles).

The 8-hour clip has lots of great stuff in it; the guy in the black shirt juggles, recites Shakespeare and more! For a laugh, read some of the user reviews of those test clips .


----------



## moyekj

moyekj said:


> Using SD Menus on a Premiere you can launch Netflix from Video on Demand. I would be very upset otherwise.
> 
> UPDATE: Hmm. I just checked and now that is no longer working. It certainly used to work as recently as a couple of days ago so something must have changed with TiVo servers to screw things up.


 Issue is now fixed. The new Netflix is now setup to launch from SDUI Video On Demand again, so now it works. Looks like there was a screwup in production servers where Premiere units were pointing back at the older version which apparently doesn't work on Premieres anymore.


----------



## Arcady

Now I can easily crash my TiVo from either the SD or HD menus!


----------



## aaronwt

Arcady said:


> Now I can easily crash my TiVo from either the SD or HD menus!


How do you crash it? I only play Netflix from the HDUI and it always seems fine from my boxes using HDMI. I watched several hours of Netflix over the last 24 hours with my TiVos. There were not any issues. Today I've added a Darblet to the HDMI chain and it's still working fine.


----------



## Arcady

It crashes the box anywhere from immediately to about 2 hours after I start using Netflix.


----------



## CubsWin

atmuscarella said:


> The only reason someone should be paying for a TiVo is because they want a superior DVR


That may be the case if you are only comparing to other cable DVR options, but if anyone has ever used a Dish Network DVR I think you would agree that the interface, responsiveness, and functionality is significantly better than the TiVo Premiere. I owned a Dish ViP622 for several years and now I have a Hopper/Joey system and the TiVo interface feels bloated and unresponsive in comparison to both.


----------



## atmuscarella

CubsWin said:


> That may be the case if you are only comparing to other cable DVR options, but if anyone has ever used a Dish Network DVR I think you would agree that the interface, responsiveness, and functionality is significantly better than the TiVo Premiere. I owned a Dish ViP622 for several years and now I have a Hopper/Joey system and the TiVo interface feels bloated and unresponsive in comparison to both.


I doubt there are very many of us that have a dish HD DVR and a TiVo Premiere sitting in our living rooms together to be able to do a direct comparison. I don't, so I can not comment on Dish's current DVRs as compared to a Premiere. I did have a Dish 510 DVR and it compared pretty well to a TiVo Series 2 back in the day.

But I wouldn't use the words bloated or unresponsive to describe my Premiere, I am currently using the SDUI and that is very fast, very responsive, and easy to use when you are doing anything with the DVR functions. Where my Premiere seem to lag is with the streaming media stuff and that is mostly during startup of the app given that Dish DVRs can not access Netflix, Hulu+, etc. I don't know how someone can do a direct comparison of those functions.


----------



## Endymion_

Lars_J said:


> Do as others have said... Go in to the TiVo video output settings, and check *1080i only* (disable 1080p).
> 
> Doing that removed all the Netflix 'blackout' issues for me. I was seeing it consistently at predictable spots on many Netflix videos.


I have used 1080i only on two TiVo Premieres since before the update to Netflix and I have always had the blank dropouts. I'll try resetting the resolution to something else, then back to 1080i again, but I'm not hopeful as this has been my resolution all this time.


----------



## mikeyts

Endymion_ said:


> I have used 1080i only on two TiVo Premieres since before the update to Netflix and I have always had the blank dropouts. I'll try resetting the resolution to something else, then back to 1080i again, but I'm not hopeful as this has been my resolution all this time.


Try playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with bit rate and resolution burned into each of its video encodes. At what resolutions are these dropouts happening?


----------



## Darichard

This is a little concerning - I was just about to pull the trigger on a Premier after having just reactivated my HD. For now I'll stick with my PS3 for Hulu and Netflix. I was using a PC as a DVR and went back to my TiVo for the convenience and great UI. Hoping I can get back to a single box for all my TV content.

Also may check out an Apple TV in the interim.


----------



## jrtroo

Well, you are hearing from those with issues. I for one, have not had any at all.


----------



## atmuscarella

Darichard said:


> This is a little concerning - I was just about to pull the trigger on a Premier after having just reactivated my HD. For now I'll stick with my PS3 for Hulu and Netflix. I was using a PC as a DVR and went back to my TiVo for the convenience and great UI. Hoping I can get back to a single box for all my TV content.
> 
> Also may check out an Apple TV in the interim.


The only possible "single" box solution is a fully loaded home theater gaming PC.

Not sure what you are looking for but unless you have already purchased allot of content from apple I would pick a Roku over an Apple TV for access to streaming media services.

If it is worth upgrading a TiVo HD to Premiere or not is debatable (and personal), I can give you reasons both ways.


----------



## Darichard

atmuscarella said:


> The only possible "single" box solution is a fully loaded home theater gaming PC.


A PC would be helpful, and I've gone that route before. I don't have cable and am running OTA only. I like WMC quite a but, but I got tired of dealing with the PC and wanted the convenience of my TiVo again. The PC was too big and my smallest PC was too under powered. Currently using a PS3 for Hulu and Netflix.

Another option could be an Xbox - I can get the OTA signal to it and (I believe) it runs WMC, so I'd have PVR + Hulu + Netflix for just a little more than an a new TiVo would cost.


----------



## mikeyts

Darichard said:


> Another option could be an Xbox - I can get the OTA signal to it and (I believe) it runs WMC, so I'd have PVR + Hulu + Netflix for just a little more than an a new TiVo would cost.


I may be wrong but I don't think that there's any official TV tuner support for the Xbox in the United States (they've demoed stuff at product shows and I think that it may be deployed in Europe). Their focus with that is IPTV and not OTA. Its current support for WMC is as a Media Extender--it gives access to a WMC server running on a PC on your LAN.

Also, unlike the PS3 and TiVo's Netflix players, the Xbox's does not play the highest quality 1080p Netflix video encodes, as yet. With last Fall's dashboard update, Microsoft seemed to have established a policy that no 1080p video shall be output by the Xbox except from their Zune Video player. A recent update to the Xbox VUDU player is a break from that policy, since it now offers 1080p HDX video (all year it has only offered SD and 720p HD quality levels). 1080p Netflix could be next.


----------



## Darichard

mikeyts said:


> Its current support for WMC is as a Media Extender--it gives access to a WMC server running on a PC on your LAN.


Ugh... right. So I'll need to have WMC running on another PC. Not as seamless as I'd hoped. However, I have a lot of PCs and CAT5 everywhere, so certainly possible. But it's yet another component to manage.



mikeyts said:


> Also, unlike the PS3 and TiVo's Netflix players, the Xbox's does not play the highest quality 1080p Netflix video encodes, as yet.


Good point. Not an issue for me, as my TV only does 1080i. But could be an issue in the future. No ideal option here. And I get the point above about not everybody disliking Hulu and Netflix on the TiVo. I suspect the performance issues with Netflix would drive me insane.

Still undecided and no great answers here. So I'll agree it's looking like a PC is going to be the closest. More time, money, and all the PC hassles, or get a TiVo P.


----------



## mikeyts

Darichard said:


> Not an issue for me, as my TV only does 1080i.


Sure it is--players will convert 1080p24 to 1080i30 or 1080p60 if your television can't accept a 24p signal; TiVo does. To see whether you're getting the 1080 encode you can play "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with bit rate and resolution burned into each of its video encodes. The difference is usually not startling, but it is sharper.


----------



## wrecklass

Personally I use the Roku box for all of my Netflix/Amazon video type viewing. The Netflix experience on the TiVo is so bad I can't stand watching that way. I thought the fact that they finally added Netflix Search to the app would change my mind, but that is not enough to convince me to use it with all of the other problems.

I find it strange that my Apple TV, PS3, Roku and even my iPad all do this so well, yet a big dedicated Video recorder/player has so much trouble doing this right.


----------



## chrispitude

wrecklass said:


> I find it strange that my Apple TV, PS3, Roku and even my iPad all do this so well, yet a big dedicated Video recorder/player has so much trouble doing this right.


You can say that again.


----------



## innocentfreak

wrecklass said:


> Personally I use the Roku box for all of my Netflix/Amazon video type viewing. The Netflix experience on the TiVo is so bad I can't stand watching that way. I thought the fact that they finally added Netflix Search to the app would change my mind, but that is not enough to convince me to use it with all of the other problems.
> 
> I find it strange that my Apple TV, PS3, Roku and even my iPad all do this so well, yet a big dedicated Video recorder/player has so much trouble doing this right.


Different chipsets from what I understand. One is designed for DVR functionality first and the other for online streaming services.

Don't forget the Premiere is running on 3-4 year old hardware.


----------



## mikeyts

It would be interesting to know what specific problems wrecklass is talking about. Most of what people have complained about aren't actual bugs, just ways in which it's designed that they don't like.


----------



## tre74

Tried using Netflix on the Premiere for the first time in a long time. I just replaced my aging AVR with a new one and was going through all of my components. I usually use a PS3 for Netlfix. Its gigabit connection has always made it the fastest of my Netflix devices. The XBOX 360 has a Netflix interface I just do not like at all. My gamertag was recently, permanently suspended so that Netflix component is useless now. I also use the Netflix interface on a Samsung SMART TV and Samsung SMART Blu-ray player. Anyhoo, was using TiVo tonight and things were looking good until the picture started to flicker on my TV. I thought it was my AVR acting up and I was not happy. I switched to the PS3 and then to the SMART TV. They both ran fine. What I noticed when watching Netflix on the TiVo is that it cannot maintain the 1080p 24fps image and switches back and forth to 1080p 60. This is where the flickering comes in to play. The audio was constant. Speaking of the audio. I was quite pleased to see that the TiVo is actually outputting Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. All of my other devices are outputting standard Dolby Digital 5.1. Before it began flickering, the TiVo was putting up a very nice picture. It was comparable to all of the other devices, though the SMART TV seemed to have the edge over the rest. So, if they could stabilize the Netflix app in the TiVo I'd be happy to use it more often as the 1080p 24fps and Dolby Digital Plus output make it technically the best Netflix device I have in my setup. If only it worked.


----------



## aaronwt

wrecklass said:


> Personally I use the Roku box for all of my Netflix/Amazon video type viewing. The Netflix experience on the TiVo is so bad I can't stand watching that way. I thought the fact that they finally added Netflix Search to the app would change my mind, but that is not enough to convince me to use it with all of the other problems.
> 
> I find it strange that my Apple TV, PS3, Roku and even my iPad all do this so well, yet a big dedicated Video recorder/player has so much trouble doing this right.


The picture quality is better from the TiVo since it has native resolution output. The 1080P24 content, running through my DVDO DUO and my Darbee Darblet looks better from the TiVo than from the Roku2 which will output that content at 1080P60. The only real issue with the Netflix stream on the TiVo is when it switches resolutions. But that is because it has native resolution output, which I think only one other device might have.

And I forgot about the DD+ issue. Sometimes the TiVo will output DD 5.1 and sometimes it will output DD+ 5.1 for the same title. While the ROku2 will always output DD+. My preference is to use the TiVo for Netflix because of the Native resolution output. But I still use my Roku2 boxes for Netflix as well. But mostly my TiVos. It really depends on what device I'm using at the time. If I just finished playing a Game on my 360 then I might use that for Netflix playback. But out of all my video devices my TiVos are used the most.


----------



## tre74

Ooh, a Darbee Darblet. Only heard of it yesterday and wondered how people were liking it. I'd get one, but it's a bit pricey. How much does it actually improve the picture? Do tell!


----------



## mikeyts

tre74 said:


> What I noticed when watching Netflix on the TiVo is that it cannot maintain the 1080p 24fps image and switches back and forth to 1080p 60. This is where the flickering comes in to play.


My guess is that your PS3 and Samsung TV would have experienced the same dips in connection-bandwidth/server-responsiveness which caused the TiVo to switch in and out of displaying Netflix's 1080p encode, but on them you wouldn't have noticed it. The PS3 would smoothly go from the 1080p24 encode to a 720p24 one and back, outputting 1080p60 for both; the television would internally handle the 24p encodes and display them at whatever its native framerate is (presumably without judder caused by 2:3 pulldown if its native rate is some multiple of 24), upconverting 720 to 1080 when necessary.


aaronwt said:


> The only real issue with the Netflix stream on the TiVo is when it switches resolutions. But that is because it has native resolution output, which I think only one other device might have.


There are a few others, which include the 2012 Panasonic BD players (DMP-BDT220, -320, -500), the WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub and an LG television or two. The difference between those and TiVo is that (at least in the case of the Panasonic BD players) they can take the other formats that Netflix's adaptive bit rate streaming will give them (480p24, 720p24) and output them as 1080p24--TiVo can only output 1080p24 as 1080p24, so when the adaptive streaming steps down to 720p and back it has to switch output resolutions, which will cause most televisions to visually hiccup (what mine does is _very_ un-pretty). The only solution is to set the output resolution of the TiVo to 1080i-only; TiVo can convert anything into 1080i on output and 1080p24 converted to 1080i30 is generally no great degradation of the picture.


----------



## aaronwt

mikeyts said:


> My guess is that your PS3 and Samsung TV would have experienced the same dips in connection-bandwidth/server-responsiveness which caused the TiVo to switch in and out of displaying Netflix's 1080p encode, but on them you wouldn't have noticed it. The PS3 would smoothly go from the 1080p24 encode to a 720p24 one and back, outputting 1080p60 for both; the television would internally handle the 24p encodes and display them at whatever its native framerate is (presumably without judder caused by 2:3 pulldown if its native rate is some multiple of 24), upconverting 720 to 1080 when necessary.
> There are a few others, which include the 2012 Panasonic BD players (DMP-BDT220, -320, -500), the WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub and an LG television or two. The difference between those and TiVo is that (at least in the case of the Panasonic BD players) they can take the other formats that Netflix's adaptive bit rate streaming will give them (480p24, 720p24) and output them as 1080p24--TiVo can only output 1080p24 as 1080p24, so when the adaptive streaming steps down to 720p and back it has to switch output resolutions, which will cause most televisions to visually hiccup (what mine does is _very_ un-pretty). The only solution is to set the output resolution of the TiVo to 1080i-only; TiVo can convert anything into 1080i on output and 1080p24 converted to 1080i30 is generally no great degradation of the picture.


It sounds like those devices don't have native resolution output if they are taking the 480P24 and 720P24 streams and outputting them as 1080P24 instead of 480P60 and 720P60. They are just scaling them and keeping the same frame rate. The Roku2 scales as well. Although the Roku2 will not keep the same framerate and will output it as 1080P60. I would rather not have the device do any scaling and have my external scaler do that since it does a better job at it. Of course because of the HDMI issue when changing resolutions you need to make a tradeoff and let the device do the scaling. But unfortunately that typically results in an inferior picture. WHich is why I typically prefer to use the native resolution output of the TiVo.

I don't know if anything changed recently but this weekend I watched season 1 of Scandal on Netflix. When I started streaming each episode, four of the seven episodes started out streaming at 1080P24 so I didn't have an issue with it changing resolutions. Since it started and stayed at 1080P24 during the entire episodes. While the other 3 started out at a lower resolution and switched to 1080P24 after a few seconds.


----------



## lujan

tre74 said:


> Ooh, a Darbee Darblet. Only heard of it yesterday and wondered how people were liking it. I'd get one, but it's a bit pricey. How much does it actually improve the picture? Do tell!


I didn't care for it. Only improved picture very nominally. Will be sending mine back. Also, TV kept finding a new device and causing the 3D settings to be disabled.


----------



## mikeyts

aaronwt said:


> It sounds like those devices don't have native resolution output if they are taking the 480P24 and 720P24 streams and outputting them as 1080P24 instead of 480P60 and 720P60. They are just scaling them and keeping the same frame rate.


Keeping the native framerate is the special part, allowing them to be displayed without pulldown motion artifacts on monitors with a factor-of-24 refresh rate which handle 24p correctly. Some people want this because they're extremely sensitive to judder.

I don't know whether any of the devices I listed have native resolution output or not. The only one that I own is a Panasonic DMP-BDT220 and it does not. Native resolution is problematic when watching video from an adaptive bit rate streaming player. If you always get a connection to a server which stays steady and never develops conditions where it would drop out of 1080p temporarily, then you'll get the one video hiccup as it climbs up to 1080p and never again, which is probably tolerable.


----------



## aaronwt

tre74 said:


> Ooh, a Darbee Darblet. Only heard of it yesterday and wondered how people were liking it. I'd get one, but it's a bit pricey. How much does it actually improve the picture? Do tell!


I'm using a couple of them and have been very pleased with the results on my Sammy LED DLP RPTV and my Sammy LCD TV.

For the past five years I had used an Algolith HDMI Flea in my main setup to reduce some of the noise from broadcast sources. With the Darblet I have it set at 42% which seems to be a good compromise in detail and noise for me. There is a nice improvement in perceived detail from both my HDTVs.

And they were only around $270 each which is a steal for what it does. My FLEA cost almost $1K five years ago and I could only use it with my broadcast sources since it can't handle above 1080P24.

The Darblet has no issue with 1080P60. I've used it with broadcast sources, streaming sources, BD sources, home made videos, and gaming sources. All with very good results. I had read the reviews of it and was skeptical, but was pleasantly surprised with the results. All this without ringing being added to the picture and without a bunch of video delay added either.


----------



## tre74

Made some tweaks. I set the AVR to pass all video inputs with no conversion and this fixed the 1080p 24fps flickers from the TiVo. Any flickers that occur now are from stream lag and not from the AVR. The Samsung Plasma does as good a job of upscaling as the AVR.


----------



## mikeyts

tre74 said:


> Any flickers that occur now are from stream lag and not from the AVR.


What's "stream lag"? I've (very rarely) seen some of these adaptive bit rate players stop and rebuffer for a few seconds and then resume playing the same high bit rate encode. Inasmuch as it should never do that (instead, smoothly switching to a lower bit rate encode before it comes near to running out of content to play) it's a bug--avoiding stops to rebuffer is the entire point of adaptive bit rate streaming.

How often does whatever you're calling "stream lag" happen?


----------



## aaronwt

No idea what stream lag is but I never have my buffer run out. Any issues I see is from the resolution chnage.


----------



## mikeyts

When this weirdness occurs I'm pretty sure that the buffer hasn't actually run out, since the buffering progress bar comes up for only a few seconds; I've measured the buffer on some devices (by unplugging them from the network and timing how long they continue to play) and they're mostly a 1 to 1.5 minutes or so. It'd take a lot longer than a few seconds to fill a buffer of that size with 5.2 Mbps content (Netflix 1080p+5.1 sound). It's definitely some sort of bug. Again, I've only very rarely seen it happen.

I've googled "stream lag" and the term has been used to describe a phenomena people have experienced with Yahoo, wherein the video blanks out for a few seconds while the audio continues. Who knows what causes that; I've never seen it.


----------



## tre74

Poor choice of words, I suppose. I was talking about the loss of video quality that occurs from time to time. The audio remains fine, but the picture will, for a few moments, look very pixelated until the quality gradually returns to normal. It doesn't stop at any time. It could be the TiVo or the router.


----------



## mikeyts

tre74 said:


> Poor choice of words, I suppose. I was talking about the loss of video quality that occurs from time to time. The audio remains fine, but the picture will, for a few moments, look very pixelated until the quality gradually returns to normal. It doesn't stop at any time. It could be the TiVo or the router.


That's normal--it happens because the player detects that its buffer is draining, meaning that under current conditions it's not able to stay ahead of the stream. When that happens it asks the server to start sending it a lower-bit-rate/lower-picture-quality version of the video stream; when it detects that things have improved it asks for a higher-bit-rate/higher-picture-quality video encode. That's adaptive bit-rate streaming (aka ABS), as opposed to the old let-the-buffer-run-dry-then-pause-to-buffer-a-lower-bit-rate-encode-and-never-go-back strategy. Those pauses to re-buffer are very disruptive and frustrating, generally thought to be much worse for the viewing experience than a momentary decrease in picture quality. When ABS works well, it's like watching the focus of a camera sharpen and soften.

Try playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with a text overlay stating bit-rate and resolution burned into each of its video encodes; it lets you see this process in action.


----------



## tre74

Played this clip. My TV is not a fan of frame rate changes and goes black for a moment and then comes back on and displays the new resolution and frame rate in the upper left corner. Oh, and this is one corny clip. The guy moonwalking while holding a laptop, lame!


----------



## mikeyts

tre74 said:


> Played this clip. My TV is not a fan of frame rate changes and goes black for a moment and then comes back on and displays the new resolution and frame rate in the upper left corner. Oh, and this is one corny clip. The guy moonwalking while holding a laptop, lame!


The frame rate never changes, just the resolution; the frame rate of the video is always 24p (or 23.976p, if you prefer ); it's not part of the information displayed. If you have 720p and 1080p enabled in your TiVo output format setting, the player will change resolution formats to 720p60 and 1080p24 when it gets to the 720p24 and 1080p24 encodes. Multiple output formats selected doesn't work at all well with adaptive bit rate streaming; IMO the TiVo Netflix player should choose the highest selected format lower than 1080p24 (720p or 1080i) and go with that, converting everything Netflix sends to that one format on output. Maybe the .0001% of people using fancy outboard scalers benefit from its ability to output 1080p24, if they additionally always get a connection to Netflix's servers which gets up to 1080p24 and stays there, but TiVo's inability to convert anything else into 1080p24 means that it has to switch formats if the player's forced to back down into a 720p encode and when it switches back, causing visual ugliness in probably most every television set up. This is confusing and detrimental to everyone who's chosen to set their TiVo to output native formats.


----------



## tre74

Thanks for the info. Still, my TiVo is a slow learner. Initially, the stream starts out at 720p 60, or 1080i 60, depending on my settings. Moments into the stream there is a switch over to 1080p 24. I'd just like it all to be sorted out before the video begins. I've restarted the same video many times over and the change in frame rate occurs at the exact same moment each time. Still, the resulting image and Dolby Digital Plus audio are nice. I recommend watching "Dreamworks Holiday Classics." Check out "Dragons: The Gift of the Night Fury." That is one gorgeous image!


----------



## Big_Craig

Does anyone else have issues with the DD+ audio not playing? Sometimes when I start netflix movie on my premiere with DD+ audio, I will get no audio at all. Actually this happens pretty often. I have to back out to the menu and start the movie again. Then it will work. I've had the audio drop out after fast forwarding too. I have my tivo connected to a Yamaha RX-V673 via HDMI.


----------



## aaronwt

Big_Craig said:


> Does anyone else have issues with the DD+ audio not playing? Sometimes when I start netflix movie on my premiere with DD+ audio, I will get no audio at all. Actually this happens pretty often. I have to back out to the menu and start the movie again. Then it will work. I've had the audio drop out after fast forwarding too. I have my tivo connected to a Yamaha RX-V673 via HDMI.


The issue I've had is that it is inconsistent for the type of audio. The same title might play 5.1 DD one time and then the next time 5.1 DD+ from my TiVos. While any title played back with my Roku 2 in 5.1 is DD+.


----------



## mikeyts

aaronwt said:


> The issue I've had is that it is inconsistent for the type of audio. The same title might play 5.1 DD one time and then the next time 5.1 DD+ from my TiVos. While any title played back with my Roku 2 in 5.1 is DD+.


Now _that_ is strange. I've never seen anything other than DD+ for 5.1 channel sound come out of the TiVo Netflix player.


----------



## PlanoEvo

Okay this is BS I shouldn't have to buy extra crap to make the premiere stream 1080P when my Roku does it just fine. Yes I have enough bandwidth 35/35 and yes I can see the difference between 1080i and 1080p you just need a large enough screen which I have 73 Mitsu DLP. Also when the premiere starts to stream a 1080p title the stupid TiVo ramps up res starting at very poor then settles at 1080p only to run fine at that output the switch back and forth to 1080i missing up to 10secs at a time. Total nonsense I am going to call TiVo and complain again...


----------



## compnurd

PlanoEvo said:


> Okay this is BS I shouldn't have to buy extra crap to make the premiere stream 1080P when my Roku does it just fine. Yes I have enough bandwidth 35/35 and yes I can see the difference between 1080i and 1080p you just need a large enough screen which I have 73 Mitsu DLP. Also when the premiere starts to stream a 1080p title the stupid TiVo ramps up res starting at very poor then settles at 1080p only to run fine at that output the switch back and forth to 1080i missing up to 10secs at a time. Total nonsense I am going to call TiVo and complain again...


you do that!... Let us know how it goes!

I also dont see how you need to buy extra "crap" to make the premiere stream 1080P it does it on it's own


----------



## PlanoEvo

Seriously this is a major flaw! Why can't it stay on 1080p which looks awesome I'll admit but switching back and forth is nonsense.


----------



## compnurd

PlanoEvo said:


> Seriously this is a major flaw! Why can't it stay on 1080p which looks awesome I'll admit but switching back and forth is nonsense.


I dont have the issue. Dont know what it is about my connection. I ramp up to 1080P and it stays


----------



## PlanoEvo

talked with TiVo and they told me to netflix. netflix told me to reset netflix app then power off TiVo then router and power up. Their (netflix) opinion was that the TiVo is much more picky with streaming so reseting seems to help most people. However I am still not happy about the ramping up resolution which sucks!


----------



## PlanoEvo

Okay it works better now it still has the ramping up issue and if you try to advance or rewind it goes back to 1080i but at least once it gets to 1080p it stays there. TiVo box is picky for sure...


----------



## Robert2413

tre74 said:


> Ooh, a Darbee Darblet. Only heard of it yesterday and wondered how people were liking it. I'd get one, but it's a bit pricey. How much does it actually improve the picture? Do tell!


By locally increasing contrast only in appropriate areas of the picture, it increases perceived detail without adding ringing on edges. It helps softer-looking HD quite a bit, but it's not appropriate for all program material. For example, I find HBO shows like True Blood looked better with the Darblet defeated because that show was already marginally over-enhanced during the production process.

My display is a Pioneer Kuro 141FD. which is already sharp in dot-by-dot mode. Reading online reviews suggests that the Darblet is most useful with LCOS projectors like the JVCs, which can be a bit soft-looking to begin with.


----------



## aaronwt

PlanoEvo said:


> Okay this is BS I shouldn't have to buy extra crap to make the premiere stream 1080P when my Roku does it just fine. Yes I have enough bandwidth 35/35 and yes I can see the difference between 1080i and 1080p you just need a large enough screen which I have 73 Mitsu DLP. Also when the premiere starts to stream a 1080p title the stupid TiVo ramps up res starting at very poor then settles at 1080p only to run fine at that output the switch back and forth to 1080i missing up to 10secs at a time. Total nonsense I am going to call TiVo and complain again...





PlanoEvo said:


> Seriously this is a major flaw! Why can't it stay on 1080p which looks awesome I'll admit but switching back and forth is nonsense.


Maybe it's an issue for the location it's streaming from. Mine goes to 1080P24 and stays there. And for the past week or so, half the time it's been starting at 1080P24 for some reason. But still staying there. It will stay at 1080P24 for the entire 42 minute episode. Although I haven't watched any movies on there lately.


----------



## mikeyts

Whether it has to step down from the 1080p24 encode or not completely depends on what conditions are locally when you're playing it. If there's not sufficient bandwidth on your path to their servers (distinct from the rated speed of your network service) or if for some reason those servers are bogged down and can't shovel you packets of content fast enough to keep up (shouldn't happen with good load balancing but nothing's perfect) then the player will switch to a lower bit rate video encode before its buffer is empty. If you always get a connection with the servers which is rock solid you'll always stay at 1080p after it gets there.


----------



## morac

I tried to watch a program on Netflix from the search screen and after a long time,I got a message saying Netflix couldn't load. At that point my Premiere stopped responding to remote presses and rebooted about 30 seconds later.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> I tried to watch a program on Netflix from the search screen and after a long time,I got a message saying Netflix couldn't load. At that point my Premiere stopped responding to remote presses and rebooted about 30 seconds later.


Is it repeatable? I tried it and it works fine for me, both pressing SEL on the title and choosing "Play" from the menu and by pressing PLAY on the title without drilling down into its menu.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Is it repeatable? I tried it and it works fine for me, both pressing SEL on the title and choosing "Play" from the menu and by pressing PLAY on the title without drilling down into its menu.


Not repeatable. After my Première rebooted, Netflix loaded up correctly, though not immediately. I had to wait a few minutes as I was getting V301 errors. That didn't make it any less annoying though. Fortunately nothing was recording.


----------



## HockeyFan

I find it hilarious that this thread is still around 5 months later 
Besides initial buffering and few seconds with pause I don't see any issues. 
I understand some cable companies have declared war on Netflix users but I chose not to do business with them


----------



## mikeyts

HockeyFan said:


> I find it hilarious that this thread is still around 5 months later
> Besides initial buffering and few seconds with pause I don't see any issues.
> I understand some cable companies have declared war on Netflix users but I chose not to do business with them


The thread's not so much about problems with the new Netflix player as it is about the fact that some people hate the new interface's design and want a player with a UI which echoes the look-and-feel of the main TiVo UI. This is a space where they can vent .


----------



## aaronwt

I like the new interface. If I could change one thing though, it would allow the info button to bring up info about the show you are watching. That is the one feature I miss from the old application.


----------



## compnurd

mikeyts said:


> The thread's not so much about problems with the new Netflix player as it is about the fact that some people hate the new interface's design and want a player with a UI which echoes the look-and-feel of the main TiVo UI. This is a space where they can vent .


If that is the idea then they need to vent on a Netflix forum


----------



## mikeyts

It's missing some features which all four of the other devices that I own with this UI have (3 BD players and a PS3): forward/back by 3 thumbs in the browser by pressing FF/REW, people search and now the Netflix "Post Play Experience" which has recently been added to all of the others (though sort of impressive, I don't really want my player to start playing the next episode of a series that I'm watching after a countdown). In other words, it could be a superior version of what it is.

It also has a bad tendency to sometimes begin playback with the lowest bit rate, unwatchably poor PQ video encode (so bad it looks like an impressionist rendering of the scene in oils). I've never seen any of the other players use that encode.

The only Netflix player UIs that I know which let you get title information without stopping playback are the Roku's, which will pop up a little overlay with title, episode number and episode title (if a series), release year, duration and rating when you press DOWN and the Xbox's unique UI, which starts playback as soon as you select the title and let's you do all manner of things in overlays while it continues to play.

The implementation of this UI on TiVo isn't perfect, but it generally works as designed and is perfectly usable, though you might not love it. Of course, there are those who've posted that they hate it so much that they refuse to use it. Whatever .


----------



## mikeyts

compnurd said:


> If that is the idea then they need to vent on a Netflix forum


Possibly, but no one is forced to listen to them vent on any forum. I think that the title of this thread makes it perfectly clear what you can expect to find if you choose to enter it . Also I'm sure that it's more satisfying for them to vent where TiVo is likely to read it, since they mainly hold TiVo responsible and want them to spend a lot of money developing and maintaining their own Netflix interface.


----------



## compnurd

mikeyts said:


> Possibly, but no one is forced to listen to them vent on any forum. I think that the title of this thread makes it perfectly clear what you can expect to find if you choose to enter it . Also I'm sure that it's more satisfying for them to vent where TiVo is likely to read it, since they mainly hold TiVo responsible and want them to spend a lot of money developing and maintaining their own Netflix interface.


Tivo very rarely monitors this forum. And you are assuming that Tivo would be allowed to spend money to develop there own interface. I think it is pretty clear netflix has standardized there interface


----------



## mikeyts

compnurd said:


> Tivo very rarely monitors this forum.


One of my closest friends is an engineer at TiVo who tells me that they're encouraged to read these forums, though forbidden to participate unless asked to prepare a response by their management (which no doubt would be edited and posted by marketing).


> And you are assuming that Tivo would be allowed to spend money to develop there own interface. I think it is pretty clear netflix has standardized there interface


_I'm_ not assuming that, the complainers are. Neither the Roku or the Xbox use the interface on the Premiere, though everything else I have which plays Netflix streams does, other than this PC and my tablet. Personally I think it's probable that companies are free to create their own Netflix UIs (with Netflix holding some veto power over what they create, inasmuch as it represents them to their customers). I could be wrong and Netflix is imposing this UI on all of their OEM partners. In any case, the part provided by Netflix would be quite expensive for TiVo to develop and maintain their own version of, so it's just smart business for them to use it.

Use of common UI designs has become the norm these days. I have several devices with VUDU and Hulu Plus players and the UI for those players on every one of them is identical to the others (except for the Xbox 360, which has Metro-look-and-feel players controllable with voice and gestures via Kinect). The only common service which differs is Amazon, whose players are different on every device, causing me to think that they don't offer a UI design for embedded systems.


----------



## rainwater

mikeyts said:


> The thread's not so much about problems with the new Netflix player as it is about the fact that some people hate the new interface's design and want a player with a UI which echoes the look-and-feel of the main TiVo UI. This is a space where they can vent .


The old player followed the TiVo UI and provided no way to discover content. You can still play content from TiVo search so no one forces you to use the new Netflix UI but I don't want to go back to the terrible app that use to be on the TiVo. Personally, I think they need to fix the button mapping and resolution switching issue (along with response times). The UI works fine for me.


----------



## Arcady

I don't care about the old UI vs. the new UI. I just want my Elite to stop crashing/rebooting when I try to use Netflix.


----------



## weymo

My Premiere does this exact thing as well. It doesn't seem to be shifting resolutions for the stream it appears that the video processor just resets...and it takes a moment or two before sync can catch up with the television (HDMI here.) PS3 on same network...never has this problem.
In our old Series 2 / Series 2 DT days when TiVo desktop was transferring and the TiVo was recording, our CPU would seize up and the box would reboot, resulting in some loss of recording time.
The Premiere XL behaves the same way. If all 4 tuners are recording and the blue transfer light is lit...watch out...it just can't seem to handle it.
Why the NIC isn't on it's own little processor, I can't imagine.
Worse still, the Netflix app audio/video will come out of sync as the box struggles. 
We always come back to the SD interface for speed.
No matter what the programming challenges are at TiVo, perception is everything. With something as utilitarian as television, they should keep it simple and keep it fast...and then let us turn ON features if we really want them, like the troubled HD menus, PiP, web content...


----------



## aaronwt

Arcady said:


> I don't care about the old UI vs. the new UI. I just want my Elite to stop crashing/rebooting when I try to use Netflix.


Netflix has been working great on both my Elites and my two tuner Premiere.


----------



## HockeyFan

aaronwt said:


> Netflix has been working great on both my Elites and my two tuner Premiere.


That's disappointing. With all the complaints
here I assumed TiVo sent me a specially designed exclusive TiVo premiere to work without flaws.
I don't feel so special now. 
I guess I'll go back to enjoying my TiVo and try to deal with it.


----------



## rainwater

weymo said:


> My Premiere does this exact thing as well. It doesn't seem to be shifting resolutions for the stream it appears that the video processor just resets...and it takes a moment or two before sync can catch up with the television (HDMI here.) PS3 on same network...never has this problem.


It actually is resolution switching that you are seeing. The PS3 doesn't have that problem because it plays at a fixed format (1080p or 720p or 1080i). So when the stream goes from 720p to 1080p on the PS3 it just converts it to the fixed format. TiVo can't do that for 1080p because it only supports pass through 1080p. The only way to fix this on the TiVo to to disable 1080p and either 720p or 1080i in your TiVo display settings.


----------



## kyderr

OK. I read the whole thread. After calling TiVo Support, they mentioned they never heard of this problem. The Resolution changes are disruptive. I'm gonna to take the idea and set my resolution forced, but I hate to have to the TiVo to the resolution upconversion. 

TiVo Wants to replace the unit. Thanks to this forum. I have learned that will not help. (I did not think it would).


----------



## chrispitude

kyderr said:


> TiVo Wants to replace the unit. Thanks to this forum. I have learned that will not help. (I did not think it would).


Don't forget to power down and power up the unit after unplugging it for 30 seconds too...


----------



## flashedbios

my complaint is having to log in with the remote control instead of the "pairing process" with the code the old app had. typing out my entire email address even just once with a remote is exausting.


----------



## mikeyts

flashedbios said:


> my complaint is having to log in with the remote control instead of the "pairing process" with the code the old app had. typing out my entire email address even just once with a remote is exausting.


That's something that I can heartily agree with, and it goes for every service-registered app on any STB. I can understand that it removes the necessity of having a PC available (or having a PC at all), but the token form of registration should be an option for those who _do_ have a PC nearby (or, in my case, connected to the same television).


----------



## HockeyFan

flashedbios said:


> my complaint is having to log in with the remote control instead of the "pairing process" with the code the old app had. typing out my entire email address even just once with a remote is exausting.


Do you want a lollipop ?


----------



## aaronwt

I like the fact that I can login using the email address. I hate having to get a pairing code. Entering my email address is usually much faster. Certainly faster on the TiVo using the TiVo Slide remote.


----------



## Gerhard

Well,

I spent the week home with a sick child, 18 mos, and he an I watched a ton of stuff.

Unlike most people, I use an industrial firewall / network intrusion system, so I assumed that my crappy display of Netflix movies might be related to that.

(Until recently, I couldn't even get the Tivo App to work at all since the Summer...)

Well, my SONY Blue Player streams Netflix flawlessly... period.

Tivo looks like crap, SONY BSP looks fantastic... I've got three of them, and ALL of them look great.

Tivo has simply dropped the ball here...

I have a 35 Mbit fiber connection, and I'm not using more than about 12Mbit to stream HD content. ALL of my TVs are 1080i or 1080p...

This is the same on the Tivo Premiers (3 of those) and the one TivoHD.


----------



## compnurd

Gerhard said:


> Well,
> 
> I spent the week home with a sick child, 18 mos, and he an I watched a ton of stuff.
> 
> Unlike most people, I use an industrial firewall / network intrusion system, so I assumed that my crappy display of Netflix movies might be related to that.
> 
> (Until recently, I couldn't even get the Tivo App to work at all since the Summer...)
> 
> Well, my SONY Blue Player streams Netflix flawlessly... period.
> 
> Tivo looks like crap, SONY BSP looks fantastic... I've got three of them, and ALL of them look great.
> 
> Tivo has simply dropped the ball here...
> 
> I have a 35 Mbit fiber connection, and I'm not using more than about 12Mbit to stream HD content. ALL of my TVs are 1080i or 1080p...
> 
> This is the same on the Tivo Premiers (3 of those) and the one TivoHD.


You wouldnt use more than 12 anyway. Netflix Caps the streams


----------



## Gerhard

compnurd said:


> You wouldnt use more than 12 anyway. Netflix Caps the streams


The Sony BSP/BDP indicate an inital network surge of about 16Mbit when connecting to Netflix...

Video quality is outstanding.

Likewise, I just tested the Netflix app in one of the TV's... and it's also flawless.

What bugs me is that if I didn't have a Logitec Harmony Remote, I'd have to manually start switching all of the inputs and crap to get things to work seemlessly.

No an easy thing to do with a cranky, tired, 18 month old with pneumonia.

(Once again, I want to thank Tivo for doing such a stellar job... -dripping with sarcasism-)

---

The house is wired using coax to 100BaseT bridges at all of the cable outlets, so I'm sure we are somewhere under the 12MByte/sec maximum through-put of Fast Ethernet, but no where near the speeds require for streaming HD.


----------



## aaronwt

The Netflix quality can be outstanding on the TiVo too. It is outstanding(for streaming) in the setups I have. I have zero issues streaming Netflix on any of my Premieres. In a few seconds it goes to 1080P24 and it stays that way during the entire program that I watch.
I am on the 150/65 tier on FiOS, but even when I was on the 35/35 tier it was just as solid.

Even on my GFs, 1.2Mb/s DSL connection, Netflix is rock solid on the Premiere. it starts sstreaming and stays solid throughout the entire program. Although with a bandwidth of only 1.2Mb/s it is limited to playing SD. And for as low as the bandwidth is at her house, the quality is much better than I would have thought.


----------



## mikeyts

With the new reduced bit rate encodes that they're rolling out, you should be able to get the highest quality HD stream on a quiescent 6 Mbps connection. (They replaced the old 3600 Kbps 720p "High/HD" encode with a 3000 Kbps one and the 4800 Kbps 1080p "X-High/HD" encode with a 3850 Kbps one, using some new tech which they bought from a company called eyeIO, which supposedly can produce H.264 video encodes of the same quality as older encoders in 20% to 50% less bandwidth. See this).


----------



## morac

It's sad that after all this time, Netflix can still lock up my Premiere and cause it to reboot.

Was watching a show and near the end, I paused it which caused playback to exit (why?). I couldn't resume so I played from the start and fast forwarded. About 75% to the end, it "bonked" and the picture froze and the box locked up. It rebooted about 30 seconds later.


----------



## moyekj

Lately I get V301 errors trying to start Netflix on Premieres which only a reboot of the TiVo resolves. Meanwhile the S3 OLED unit has no problems at all with Netflix during the same period...


----------



## DJQuad

I doubt this will make you feel any better, but the YouTube app is equally as ****ty if not worse.

TiVo "outsourced" both apps to the respective developers based on some weird licensing agreements, and now we're stuck with the same horrid apps that are on other platforms (Xbox, Wii, etc).

Some don't blame TiVo because TiVo didn't develop the Netflix and YouTube apps. I entirely blame TiVo for accepting both of these crappy apps on their platform. TiVo is who I pay for service.


----------



## chrispitude

morac said:


> It's sad that after all this time, Netflix can still lock up my Premiere and cause it to reboot.
> 
> Was watching a show and near the end, I paused it which caused playback to exit (why?). I couldn't resume so I played from the start and fast forwarded. About 75% to the end, it "bonked" and the picture froze and the box locked up. It rebooted about 30 seconds later.


This exact thing happened to us last week - pause, exit, and everything.


----------



## mrizzo80

Overall I like the Netflix app a lot; but I continue to get instances of sub-menus not showing text (or only showing partial text) when it should. Pretty annoying. Generally happens after browsing around the interface. Anyone else getting this?


----------



## TVCricket

I've gotten used to the app, but I have a question about internet usage. If I leave a movie or show paused for a long period of time, does the data continue to crank away? Reason I ask is because I checked my provider's new usage meter and it's telling me that I used 7GB one day. I don't play games on Steam, download movies off iTunes/Amazon, or any other major data hungry needs.


----------



## morac

TVCricket said:


> I've gotten used to the app, but I have a question about internet usage. If I leave a movie or show paused for a long period of time, does the data continue to crank away? Reason I ask is because I checked my provider's new usage meter and it's telling me that I used 7GB one day. I don't play games on Steam, download movies off iTunes/Amazon, or any other major data hungry needs.


It doesn't use any data when paused. I don't pause for long periods though as I've found doing so makes the Premiere unstable.


----------



## slacker9876

Thank you all for this thread, I had called Netflix and TiVo then I came here and got the RIGHT answer.

While I think it is a lame design flaw I am set to 1080i now and it is FINALLY working without issue. I should have known this is where the real experts reside 

Now I am off to find out why Hulu Plus indicates 0 seconds to resume and it is more like 15. Unless of course if it is the same thing.


----------



## Fist of Death

wrecklass said:


> Personally I use the Roku box for all of my Netflix/Amazon video type viewing. The Netflix experience on the TiVo is so bad I can't stand watching that way. I thought the fact that they finally added Netflix Search to the app would change my mind, but that is not enough to convince me to use it with all of the other problems.
> 
> I find it strange that my Apple TV, PS3, Roku and even my iPad all do this so well, yet a big dedicated Video recorder/player has so much trouble doing this right.


I finally gave up and now have a Roku XS 2 (or is it 2 XS) sitting on top of my TiVo Premiere XL4, both connected to my receiver via HDMI. TiVo is used for TV, Roku for all other streaming stuff. I hated to drop the $59 for the extra box (on sale right before Christmas at Costco), but the improvement is night and day better - especially the Netflix app. Too bad TiVo couldn't get streaming as dialed-in as Roku seems to...


----------



## Dan203

I bought a new SmartTV a few weeks ago and started using it for all my streaming stuff. Not only is the Netflix app significantly faster but it also has HBOGo and VUDU, both of which I use pretty regularly. Not having to switch over to my PS3 or XBox to use these services is very nice. I'd prefer it if my TiVo were the "one box" it was purposed to be, but having these apps built into the TV is a close second. (nothing extra to switch on or wait to boot up)

Dan


----------



## morac

Netflix revealed Super HD and 3D streaming today. TiVo isn't compatible according to the Engadget article. It doesn't matter for most people though since only ISP's that peer with Netflix's CND will get this and that's only Cablevision and Google Fiber.


----------



## MDMarshall

I'm one of the few still watching an old Tube TV, so I'm used to the pixelization when watching Netflix.

But my last two movies were different. Video goes black for about .25 seconds, about once a minute when it's bad. And sound would skip 3-4 times, also about once a minute, but not at the same time as the video troubles.

The skipping sound was the worst part, would make dialogue illegible about 4 times per movie.

The first time, I was hoping it was the movie. Now I'm hoping it's a bad server somewhere and will get better soon.

Did something change in the last ~2 weeks? I'm about ready to go back to Roku.....

Thanks, all!

Mikey
O-


----------



## rainwater

morac said:


> Netflix revealed Super HD and 3D streaming today. TiVo isn't compatible according to the Engadget article. It doesn't matter for most people though since only ISP's that peer with Netflix's CND will get this and that's only Cablevision and Google Fiber.


It's really not clear which hardware supports Super HD. Netflix does mention smart tvs and blu ray players that do 1080p will also support this. Since the TiVo app supports 1080p, it isn't out of the question that the TiVo app already does as well. Netflix needs to clarify this. Of course it hardly matters at the moment for most people.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> ...only ISP's that peer with Netflix's CND will get this and that's only Cablevision and Google Fiber.


Someone in a thread at AVS Forum reported getting it with Frontier FiOS. He didn't say where he was but Frontier Communications only operates in Indiana, Oregon, SC and Washington.


----------



## compnurd

mikeyts said:


> Someone in a thread at AVS Forum reported getting it with Frontier FiOS. He didn't say where he was but Frontier Communications only operates in Indiana, Oregon, SC and Washington.


The DSL Reports article is bad. I have Armstrong Cable(small company) and I have support for it


----------



## HockeyFan

mikeyts said:


> Someone in a thread at AVS Forum reported getting it with Frontier FiOS. He didn't say where he was but Frontier Communications only operates in Indiana, Oregon, SC and Washington.


Is frontier fios possibly getting redbox?
Would fios not use the New cnd because 
it doesn't want Netflix compete with redbox?

Why is cablevision doing this? Don't they 
have caps and throttling for Netflix?
were they loosing too many customers and
decide to change?

So, now Netflix has same bit rates as Vudu?

Sorry, didn't realize I had so many questions
on one post.


----------



## compnurd

HockeyFan said:


> Is frontier fios possibly getting redbox?
> Would fios not use the New cnd because
> it doesn't want Netflix compete with redbox?
> 
> Why is cablevision doing this? Don't they
> have caps and throttling for Netflix?
> were they loosing too many customers and
> decide to change?
> 
> So, now Netflix has same bit rates as Vudu?
> 
> Sorry, didn't realize I had so many questions
> on one post.


Cablevision has never had caps or throttling


----------



## mikeyts

I found out what the Super HD bit rates are. Someone on a small ISP in San Francisco (Sonic.Net) posted a snap of "Example Short 23.976" running in the Windows 8 app with the Stream Manager showing on AVS Forum, here. You can see the full resolution version of that shot by right-clicking it and dragging it into the new tab control on your browser and hitting F11 to blow it up fullscreen. In addition to the 2350-, 3000- (both 720p) and 3850 Kbps (1080p) encodes you can get without Super HD, there are also 4300- and 5800 Kbps 1080p encodes. That 5800 Kbps is a 50% increase over 3850 Kbps--should be nice.


----------



## HockeyFan

compnurd said:


> Cablevision has never had caps or throttling


Right. Comcast has 250gb cap.
Always mix the two up.
Thought all non fios had caps and Netflix 
throttling. Co workers with cablevision 
were always complaining about Netflix issues.
Must have been something else.


----------



## aaronwt

HockeyFan said:


> Is frontier fios possibly getting redbox?
> Would fios not use the New cnd because
> it doesn't want Netflix compete with redbox?
> 
> Why is cablevision doing this? Don't they
> have caps and throttling for Netflix?
> were they loosing too many customers and
> decide to change?
> 
> So, now Netflix has same bit rates as Vudu?
> 
> Sorry, didn't realize I had so many questions
> on one post.


Vudu 3bar HDX averages around 9Mb/s.


----------



## morac

HockeyFan said:


> Right. Comcast has 250gb cap.
> Always mix the two up.
> Thought all non fios had caps and Netflix
> throttling. Co workers with cablevision
> were always complaining about Netflix issues.
> Must have been something else.


Comcast's cap is currently suspended for most users while Comcast decides which of 2 new cap schemes they want to go with. Only users in the two trial towns still have a cap.


----------



## HockeyFan

morac said:


> Comcast's cap is currently suspended for most users while Comcast decides which of 2 new cap schemes they want to go with. Only users in the two trial towns still have a cap.


Either way, neither company would be
getting my business .
did have cablevision once. Never again!


----------



## compnurd

HockeyFan said:


> Either way, neither company would be
> getting my business .
> did have cablevision once. Never again!


Cablevision is one of the best ISP's in the country... right behind fios in terms of speed and price


----------



## apw2607

The netflix client on the tivo is actually one of the best clients there is. Why ?

Because its the only client that I know that's able to play 1080p/24 streams with DD+ bitstream audio.

My ISP is in netflix superhd club. My Sony bdp-s790 netflixs client shows the superhd logo against certain titles. The tivo client doesn't

But, when the tivo switches to 1080p/24 it looks identical to the Sony x-high or superhd stream with the tivo getting the bonus 24 frames per second output.

So I prefer tivo over Sony.

Where tivo falls over is its ability to navigate the titles. It is slower than the Sony.


----------



## mikeyts

apw2607 said:


> Because its the only client that I know that's able to play 1080p/24 streams with DD+ bitstream audio.


The 2012 Panasonics 3D BDPs can do that _and_ have a full implementation of that UI, with skip-forward/back-by-3 in the browser, people search and the "Just for Kids" alternative UI. I assume that the 2013 Panasonic 3D BDPs also have those capabilities.


apw2607 said:


> My ISP is in netflix superhd club. My Sony bdp-s790 netflixs client shows the superhd logo against certain titles. The tivo client doesn't
> 
> But, when the tivo switches to 1080p/24 it looks identical to the Sony x-high or superhd stream with the tivo getting the bonus 24 frames per second output.


My guess is that it's getting the Super HD encodes whether it knows how to put the tag on the title's description or not. You can test it with "Example Short 23.976".


----------



## HockeyFan

apw2607 said:


> The netflix client on the tivo is actually one of the best clients there is. Why ?
> 
> Because its the only client that I know that's able to play 1080p/24 streams with DD+ bitstream audio.
> 
> My ISP is in netflix superhd club. My Sony bdp-s790 netflixs client shows the superhd logo against certain titles. The tivo client doesn't
> 
> But, when the tivo switches to 1080p/24 it looks identical to the Sony x-high or superhd stream with the tivo getting the bonus 24 frames per second output.
> 
> So I prefer tivo over Sony.
> 
> Where tivo falls over is its ability to navigate the titles. It is slower than the Sony.


Yes I also prefer TiVo over the ps3.
The TiVo interface is quite slow.
Sometimes I use the ps3 to build my queue,
then go back to the TiVo to play the videos.

I'm thinking of getting a blu ray player for
my Pioneer plasma tv, Sony s390. No 3d.
Does the Sony blue ray players allow you to
search for actors names in Netflix?
Ps3 does, and I really like this feature.


----------



## apw2607

mikeyts said:


> The 2012 Panasonics 3D BDPs can do that _and_ have a full implementation of that UI, with skip-forward/back-by-3 in the browser, people search and the "Just for Kids" alternative UI. I assume that the 2013 Panasonic 3D BDPs also have those capabilities.
> My guess is that it's getting the Super HD encodes whether it knows how to put the tag on the title's description or not. You can test it with "Example Short 23.976".


The panasonic implementation of 24p is a kluge and you have to turn it on each time you use it.

When I tested the bdt220 the 24p feature was horrible with netflix. I don't know what it was doing but didn't look anything like 24p from a BD in terms of look.

The tivo netflix. 24p output (and amazon vod for that matter) look great


----------



## apw2607

HockeyFan said:


> Yes I also prefer TiVo over the ps3.
> The TiVo interface is quite slow.
> Sometimes I use the ps3 to build my queue,
> then go back to the TiVo to play the videos.
> 
> I'm thinking of getting a blu ray player for
> my Pioneer plasma tv, Sony s390. No 3d.
> Does the Sony blue ray players allow you to
> search for actors names in Netflix?
> Ps3 does, and I really like this feature.


Sure.


----------



## apw2607

Tivo (premier) is able to play the 5800kbs streams. 

Tested with example 23.976

When it does it switches to 1080p/24 ouput.

The netflix UI on tivo does not show the superhd tag though

FYI.


----------



## apw2607

There is one other small bug I've found with netflix on tivo though. The first time you launch netflix and play a DD+ show, tivo will only play the show as DD. if you stop and restart the show it will then play correctly as DD+. From then on all shows that are in DD+ will play as DD+ until you restart the netflix client.

Annoying. Hopefully then fix it at some point.


----------



## mikeyts

apw2607 said:


> The panasonic implementation of 24p is a kluge and you have to turn it on each time you use it.
> 
> When I tested the bdt220 the 24p feature was horrible with netflix. I don't know what it was doing but didn't look anything like 24p from a BD in terms of look.


Well this is the first and only time that I've heard that opinion expressed in the year that the 2012 Panasonic BDPs have been on the market (after 3000 posts in its thread on AVS Forum). Sadly I can't judge for myself because I have an older 60 Hz Mitsubishi LCD panel which can't accept 24p; if I send it, my AVR converts it to 60p.

I will give you that having to turn 24p on every time you run the app is a kluge, but only a tiny fraction of the kluge that 24p support in TiVo's Netflix player is. I'm willing to bet that many people have just marginally enough bandwidth to get up to the 1080p Netfllix encode after which it eventually falls back, something which might happen many times, depending upon the title. Every time it pops into 1080p and every time it pops out the great majority of monitors (if not all) will visually decompensate, rendering the Netflix player pretty much useless. This is due to the bizarre decision on TiVo's part to implement 1080p24 without the ability to scale arbitrary resolution/framerate combos to it. If you're not tech-savvy enough to figure it out or persistent and lucky enough to find the answer online, you're just plain SOL insofar as playing most HD Netflix titles on TiVo is concerned. My guess is that there are a pretty significant number of TiVo Premiere owners in that category.


----------



## aaronwt

apw2607 said:


> The panasonic implementation of 24p is a kluge and you have to turn it on each time you use it.
> 
> When I tested the bdt220 the 24p feature was horrible with netflix. I don't know what it was doing but didn't look anything like 24p from a BD in terms of look.
> 
> The tivo netflix. 24p output (and amazon vod for that matter) look great


Are you sure the content you were watching was 24P and not 30P? Watching 24P content from Netflix with the 24P setting on my Panasonic has no issues for me.
I recently got the Panny 220 for 3D BD playback, but I like the streaming applications it has. Certainly better than my PS3 was(except Amazon). And faster than the TiVo Netflix interface.

I'm curious how the BDT230 will be when it's released next month. I'm hoping it comes out before my sixty day exchange period is up at BestBuy so I can get the newest model.


----------



## apw2607

mikeyts said:


> Well this is the first and only time that I've heard that opinion expressed in the year that the 2012 Panasonic BDPs have been on the market (after 3000 posts in its thread on AVS Forum). Sadly I can't judge for myself because I have an older 60 Hz Mitsubishi LCD panel which can't accept 24p; if I send it, my AVR converts it to 60p.
> 
> I will give you that having to turn 24p on every time you run the app is a kluge, but only a tiny fraction of the kluge that 24p support in TiVo's Netflix player is. I'm willing to bet that many people have just marginally enough bandwidth to get up to the 1080p Netfllix encode after which it eventually falls back, something which might happen many times, depending upon the title. Every time it pops into 1080p and every time it pops out the great majority of monitors (if not all) will visually decompensate, rendering the Netflix player pretty much useless. This is due to the bizarre decision on TiVo's part to implement 1080p24 without the ability to scale arbitrary resolution/framerate combos to it. If you're not tech-savvy enough to figure it out or persistent and lucky enough to find the answer online, you're just plain SOL insofar as playing most HD Netflix titles on TiVo is concerned. My guess is that there are a pretty significant number of TiVo Premiere owners in that category.


Solid 100MB/s down for me. 

On more testing the tivo switches to 1080p/24 on the 4300 and 5800 streams.

I agree with you that if you have a wonky Internet connection netflix on tivo is horrible. But if you have a good pipe, it works well.


----------



## apw2607

aaronwt said:


> Are you sure the content you were watching was 24P and not 30P? Watching 24P content from Netflix with the 24P setting on my Panasonic has no issues for me.
> I recently got the Panny 220 for 3D BD playback, but I like the streaming applications it has. Certainly better than my PS3 was(except Amazon). And faster than the TiVo Netflix interface.
> 
> I'm curious how the BDT230 will be when it's released next month. I'm hoping it comes out before my sixty day exchange period is up at BestBuy so I can get the newest model.


I loathed viera connect, viera cast or smart viera or whatever they are calling it. It's slow, looks horrible and you've got to go to another online system to get to the apps, unless there is shortcut on the remote.


----------



## aaronwt

apw2607 said:


> I loathed viera connect, viera cast or smart viera or whatever they are calling it. It's slow, looks horrible and you've got to go to another online system to get to the apps, unless there is shortcut on the remote.


Yes there is a button on the remote for a shortcut. And a dedicated Netflix button. In my use so far it's been a much better experience than my PS3 and many of my other streaming boxes. It's been quick and looked nice too. And I'm also able to use 40Mhz bandwidth over WiFi. The only thing I can really complain about is Amazon streaming because it is limited to stereo audio.


----------



## mikeyts

apw2607 said:


> I agree with you that if you have a wonky Internet connection netflix on tivo is horrible. But if you have a good pipe, it works well.


The question is how many people have "a good enough pipe"? People who subscribe to service that's nominally just barely enough to get 3850 Kbps 1080p, say a 5-8 Mbps tier, will probably see enough drift that they'll pop in and out of 1080p speed, particularly if there are others using that service in their household concurrently with their viewing Netflix. With Netflix players in most devices that's not a problem; PQ will shift a bit back and forth but not disruptively. The situation renders TiVo's Netflix player more or less unusable.

Beyond having 24p in VOD players, which I don't use, I find my BDT220 to be hands down the best at rendering network VOD sources. I argued with someone about the quality of the VUDU HDX encode of _Prometheus_ having excessive banding which I saw and he didn't and it turned out to be not the encode but what I was watching it on (my PS3, unto which I'd downloaded it to take any possible connection speed fluctuation out of the equation). When I tried various titles on various network VOD services on all of my streaming devices--Roku 2 XS, PS3, Xbox 360, BDT220, TiVo and this PC--the BDT220 consistently delivered the most digital artifact free and nearly judder-free output. It even handled bad cases well (_Hugo_ on Netflix comes to mind--it's something produced at 24p which strangely got encoded at 30p by Netflix. The opening continuous panning shot through a busy train station is, to various degrees, a judder-fest on all my players except the BDT220. It's now my go-to player for VUDU, though I generally use my Roku 2 XS for speed and convenience for most everything else.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> The question is how many people have "a good enough pipe"? People who subscribe to service that's nominally just barely enough to get 3850 Kbps 1080p, say a 5-8 Mbps tier, will probably see enough drift that they'll pop in and out of 1080p speed, particularly if there are others using that service in their household concurrently with their viewing Netflix. With Netflix players in most devices that's not a problem; PQ will shift a bit back and forth but not disruptively. The situation renders TiVo's Netflix player more or less unusable.


The average U.S. broadband speed is 6.6 Mbps which is more than enough to sustain a 3850 Kbps 1080p stream. If the PQ is shifting back and forth with a 6 Mbps there is either a problem with the connection or the routing to the CDN server.

For example, back when I had an 8 Mbps connection (I have 50 now), I used to have horrible picture quality problems streaming from Netflix and Amazon downloads to my TiVo took over 8 hours for a 30 minute TV show. It turned out there was a routing problem between Limelight networks CDN and Comcast. Once that was fixed everything worked great.

Many streaming problems are actually caused by people switching their DNS to a 3rd party server to "improve performance". While this might result in faster DNS queries it can also result in DNS based location lookup calculating the wrong user location. This causes sub-optimal CDN servers to used which can cause poor speed as the closer the CDN server is, the better it is (usually). See http://shaun.net/2011/02/how-third-party-dns-resolvers-can-impact-performance/ and http://lifehacker.com/5721188/fix-itunes-and-other-slowdowns-by-ditching-third+party-dns-servers


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> The average U.S. broadband speed is 6.6 Mbps which is more than enough to sustain a 3850 Kbps 1080p stream. If the PQ is shifting back and forth with a 6 Mbps there is either a problem with the connection or the routing to the CDN server.


Or excessive traffic somewhere along the route or sharing the pipe with others in your household doing other things.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> Or excessive traffic somewhere along the route or sharing the pipe with others in your household doing other things.


Excessive traffic along the route would fall under connection or routing issues as I've stated since the ideal routing should pick a CDN geographically close by. Shorter distances (i.e. less routing) should theoretically be less prone to congestion.

Issues with other traffic in your household can be corrected by setting up QOS (or telling others not to download large files while you are watching Netflix). In any case that's a domestic issue.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> Excessive traffic along the route would fall under connection or routing issues as I've stated since the ideal routing should pick a CDN geographically close by. Shorter distances (i.e. less routing) should theoretically be less prone to congestion.


Your router wouldn't seem to determine what servers you get connected to. If you have Windows 8 on a PC, try the procedure that I outline in this post at AVS Forum. The first thing that happens with the Windows 8 Netflix app is that it opens a couple of connections to a server on Amazon's AWS CDN in Virginia (according to whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup). When I start playing something I get connected at first to a bunch of different servers, which eventually settles down to being one or two servers (usually--I've seen it persist in streaming from four or five). Most of the time these are servers in Limelight Networks' CDN, apparently in Tempe AZ (which'd be 350 miles from here in San Diego) and once a Limelight server in the San Francisco area, but in peak hours I've seen it hook me up with servers in the Level 3 and Akamai CDNs, in Wichita and as far away as Cambridge MA. It never seems to stream from the AWS servers, though it's always exchanging some amount of data with one, settling down to a trickle (100 bytes/sec or less), so I think that AWS servers direct the process.

I just tried it playing a stream in the Netflix website player, with pretty much the same results, so you don't need to be running Windows 8 to do this experiment (given that the resource monitor in earlier versions of Windows can do the same tricks, which may not be true).

Of course embedded players could use an entirely different process but it seems unlikely to me (it may be possible to trace that activity using your router, but it'd no doubt be considerably more difficult with most).


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> The first thing that happens with the Windows 8 Netflix app is that it opens a couple of connections to a server on Amazon's AWS CDN in Virginia (according to whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup).


This will differ for people in different areas of the country because of anycast. It's not based on your router, but your DNS. Your machine may open a connection to Amazon's AWS CDN in Virginia, but others will open elsewhere. I posted an example in a prior link, but the IP address returned depends on your DNS.

Using Limelight CND as an example, using Comcast's 75.75.75.75 DNS to lookup amazon-128.fcod.llnwd.net returns 68.142.111.106 which is fcds204.iad.llnw.net (IAD server farm). Using L3's 4.2.2.1 DNS returns 68.142.90.171 or fcds204.lga.llnw.net (LGA server farm).

I'll mention that Netflix uses redundant CDNs (Limelight and Akamai last I checked a couple years ago) to ensure stream quality. If one is bad, it will use the other. If both are bad, that's when problems occur. AWS is used for menu graphics and the like which is why when AWS fails you can't even get into Netflix, but AWS isn't used for actual streaming.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> Using Limelight CND as an example, using Comcast's 75.75.75.75 DNS to lookup amazon-128.fcod.llnwd.net returns 68.142.111.106 which is fcds204.iad.llnw.net (IAD server farm). Using L3's 4.2.2.1 DNS returns 68.142.90.171 or fcds204.lga.llnw.net (LGA server farm).


I wonder why my Cox San Diego South DNS always gives me an AWS server in VA? (EDIT: I just checked; could be because I've been assigned to Cox DNS servers in Atlanta ). What are IAD and LGA? Designations of Limelight server farm locations? I generally get connected to stream servers in the lax.llnw.net subdomain which seems to be in Tempe.



> I'll mention that Netflix uses redundant CDNs (Limelight and Akamai last I checked a couple years ago) to ensure stream quality.


As I stated above, I generally get streams from Limelight servers in Tempe; during peak times I get connected usually Level 3 servers in Wichita and at least once to an Akamai server in Cambridge, MA (which could hardly be further away, but latency doesn't matter much in highly buffered streaming). I doubt that connection latency to the AWS server(s) used matters much either, but I'll try some of the open DNSes and see what changes.


----------



## morac

mikeyts said:


> I wonder why my Cox San Diego South DNS always gives me an AWS server in VA? (EDIT: I just checked; could be because I've been assigned to Cox DNS servers in Atlanta ). What are IAD and LGA? Designations of Limelight server farm locations? I generally get connected to stream servers in the lax.llnw.net subdomain which seems to be in Tempe.


Limelight names its server farms after nearby airports which makes it easy to figure where they are. LAX is Los Angeles International. IAD is Washington Dulles International. LGA is Leguardia.

Figuring out the Akamai location require doing trace routes and the like.

I'm not sure AWS actually has a location based server (at least not for Netflix) since AWS isn't actually delivering the content so a little extra latency or lower bandwidth isn't terrible, unless the server fails. That's why the Christmas AWS Virginia server failure took out Netflix for most users.


----------



## ness282

Lars_J said:


> Don't be ridiculous. At Netflix level streaming quality, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is minimal - if even noticeable. This is not Bluray quality.


LMAO exactly what do you think bluray is; magic? Unless you are a billionaire with experimental technology you're tv isn't capable of displaying beyond 1080p. 1080p is the best you can get, from bluray or netflix (btw some of the few places you can get it).


----------



## moyekj

ness282 said:


> LMAO exactly what do you think bluray is; magic? Unless you are a billionaire with experimental technology you're tv isn't capable of displaying beyond 1080p. 1080p is the best you can get, from bluray or netflix (btw some of the few places you can get it).


 But the bit rate for blu ray is significantly higher than Netflix streaming making it much better quality.


----------



## atmuscarella

ness282 said:


> LMAO exactly what do you think bluray is; magic? Unless you are a billionaire with experimental technology you're tv isn't capable of displaying beyond 1080p. 1080p is the best you can get, from bluray or netflix (btw some of the few places you can get it).


There is more too it than just 1080P how much it is compressed (see bit rate) really matters and nothing you stream over the Internet is any where near the quality of a blue ray disk. As an example most movies on blu-ray will be 20 to 30GB the same movie gets compressed down to 2-3GB when streamed by a service like Netflix.

Now if you can actually see the difference between a well done stream and the blu-ray version of the same video depends on your TV size, where you sit, and your eyes. Many people don't have big enough TVs or sit close enough to see the difference as an example I think to see all the resolution a 50 inch 1080p TV can produce you need to be 5 feet away from it, so if you are sitting 10 feet away it would be hard to see the improved quality of blu-ray over streaming.


----------



## morac

atmuscarella said:


> Now if you can actually see the difference between a well done stream and the blu-ray version of the same video depends on your TV size, where you sit, and your eyes. Many people don't have big enough TVs or sit close enough to see the difference as an example I think to see all the resolution a 50 inch 1080p TV can produce you need to be 5 feet away from it, so if you are sitting 10 feet away it would be hard to see the improved quality of blu-ray over streaming.


For a 50" screen you should start to see the benefits of 1080p at about 10 feet, but won't see the full benefits until about 6 feet. See http://www.foxav.net/html/body_screen_size.html

Bit rate doesn't come into play for that though as bit rate effects picture quality when there is motion on screen. A static scene in 1080p will look the same on Netflix as it does on a Blu-ray. Fast motion will break up (macro block) on lower bit rates because motion requires more data. That would be noticeable at distances greater than 10 feet for a 50" TV.

Of note there's a new h.265 standard that supposedly handles compression better such that it has the same picture quality as h.264, at half the bit rate. Nothing supports h.265 yet though.


----------



## atmuscarella

morac said:


> For a 50" screen you should start to see the benefits of 1080p at about 10 feet, but won't see the full benefits until about 6 feet. See http://www.foxav.net/html/body_screen_size.html
> 
> Bit rate doesn't come into play for that though as bit rate effects picture quality when there is motion on screen. A static scene in 1080p will look the same on Netflix as it does on a Blu-ray. Fast motion will break up (macro block) on lower bit rates because motion requires more data. That would be noticeable at distances greater than 10 feet for a 50" TV.
> 
> Of note there's a new h.265 standard that supposedly handles compression better such that it has the same picture quality as h.264, at half the bit rate. Nothing supports h.265 yet though.


Ya I know sitting distance, bit rate, & and the actually abilities of the TV being used effect over all perceived quality in different ways.

But my point is between where people sit and the abilities of the TV they are watching on, for many people it is hard to see the difference between a movie on blu-ray and the same movie via a high quality stream.

Just for general info most new movies are actually filmed in 4K (4 times the definition as 1080p) and there is talk about going to 8K so even a blu-ray disk is compressed and a reduction in the quality compared to the movie in theaters. Also HD TVs can not currently reproduce as wide a color field as what you can see in a movie theater. Ok end of my plug for still going to movie theaters.


----------



## morac

atmuscarella said:


> Just for general info most new movies are actually filmed in 4K (4 times the definition as 1080p) and there is talk about going to 8K so even a blu-ray disk is compressed and a reduction in the quality compared to the movie in theaters. Also HD TVs can not currently reproduce as wide a color field as what you can see in a movie theater. Ok end of my plug for still going to movie theaters.


Blu-ray is already compressed and most films don't use the whole disk (which is why they can have extras on the same disk). If the blu-ray spec adds h.265 compression, then twice as much data can fit on the disk.

Also I'm not sure where you got that HD TV's can't produce as much color as a movie theater projector. Maybe you are referencing the fact that the RGB color range for blu-rays is actually 16-235 instead of 0-255, but that's not a limitation of HD TVs. Mine supports 0-255 which is called "wide color" in the settings. It's just not used for movies or TV since that uses YPrPb and not RGB and the current standard for YPrPb says color needs to be between 16 and 235. Video games use RGB so they can support the full color range (0-255) on my TV if the settings on my TV match my PS3. In any case the limitation isn't on the TV, but the video source.

Personally other than IMAX films, I find movie theater picture quality to be lacking compared to HD TV. So much so that I can't watch regular (non iMAX digital or analog) films as the quality is lacking.


----------



## atmuscarella

morac said:


> Blu-ray is already compressed and most films don't use the whole disk (which is why they can have extras on the same disk). If the blu-ray spec adds h.265 compression, then twice as much data can fit on the disk.
> 
> Also I'm not sure where you got that HD TV's can't produce as much color as a movie theater projector. Maybe you are referencing the fact that the RGB color range for blu-rays is actually 16-235 instead of 0-255, but that's not a limitation of HD TVs. Mine supports 0-255 which is called "wide color" in the settings. It's just not used for movies or TV since that uses YPrPb and not RGB and the current standard for YPrPb says color needs to be between 16 and 235. Video games use RGB so they can support the full color range (0-255) on my TV if the settings on my TV match my PS3. In any case the limitation isn't on the TV, but the video source.


If you would like to see an explanation of the color thing take a look at this episode of Tezilla:

http://revision3.com/tekzilla/bb10-ifixit-gopro-teardown​
The part about color starts at 9:40 and only runs at about 3 mins.



morac said:


> Personally other than IMAX films, I find movie theater picture quality to be lacking compared to HD TV. So much so that I can't watch regular (non iMAX digital or analog) films as the quality is lacking.


I live in a small rural town and my local theater is pretty poor so I do understand your observation. But if I drive up to Rochester and go to a better theater it is completely different. The bottom line is a good theater is the only place you can possibly see (and hear) a movie as the producer intended. Frankly because my room setup causes me to sit 14 ft away from my set and because most theater movies on blu-ray are not full screen I do at times find the experience lacking (I have a medium grade 7.1 sound system so the sound is very good). I actually find a good full screen OTA TV show can provide a better "experience" than lots of blu-ray movies. If I were buying a TV today it would be a 65 inch one.


----------



## jwyz

Hope this helps. I had the same problem with Netflex on my tivo premiere 4 with the resolution changing causing the TV to black out for a few seconds at a time
making it impossible to watch.

Changing the setting in my Denon receiver eliminated the problem.
The setting is under the HDMI set up. Turning the i/p scaler setting to off completely fixed my problems.

Now the high definition Netflex is a thing of beauty on the Tivo.


----------



## mikeyts

jwyz said:


> Turning the i/p scaler setting to off completely fixed my problems.
> 
> Now the high definition Netflex is a thing of beauty on the Tivo.


The scaler in your AVR was causing the problem? That your TV can handle the switch without a bobble is impressive. What is it?


----------



## jwyz

The TV is a 4 year old Samsung 52" LCD.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

I personally love the new Netflix app, the entire interface looks exactly consistent with the PS3 Netflix app. I only wish it would launch faster but that's probably a limitation of the TiVo using only half of the dual core processor.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Brad Bishop said:


> I've tried the Netflix app on the TiVo. It's close to unusable because of speed. If you want to just skip it, pay the $100 and get an Apple TV or Roku (I assume Roku supports Netflix and is quick).
> 
> I can testify that the Apple TV Netflix interface is both nice and quick.
> 
> The TiVo Netflix interface is like working with the online world through an interface of molasses.
> 
> Also interesting: I remember the CEO of TiVo a few years back giving an interview and telling us all that his vision was that the TiVo was going to be the end-all, be-all interface to getting our video content (cable & internet).
> 
> To the CEO: This is a failure. The interfaces are slow as crap and, while not your fault, the end user ends up with Hulu+ and paying for limited shows that he'd otherwise get w/o question via a computer. It's stupid.
> 
> TiVo as an interface to the cable company works quite well. TiVo as an interface to anything else is a failure.


I've used the Roku 2 XS and ended up returning it for the specific fact that it didn't output Dolby Digital 5.1 on Netflix content that had Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 audio, would get a "audio format is not supported" message from my television. My only option was to set the audio output to Dolby Stereo for everything which defeated the purpose of surround sound in the first place.


----------



## compnurd

Mike-Wolf said:


> I personally love the new Netflix app, the entire interface looks exactly consistent with the PS3 Netflix app. I only wish it would launch faster but that's probably a limitation of the TiVo using only half of the dual core processor.


Tivo has used both cores for well over a year now


----------



## mikeyts

Mike-Wolf said:


> I've used the Roku 2 XS and ended up returning it for the specific fact that it didn't output Dolby Digital 5.1 on Netflix content that had Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 audio...


That's DD+ 5.1 in Netflix; VUDU has some DD+ 7.1 content, also passed through by a Roku untouched.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

compnurd said:


> Tivo has used both cores for well over a year now


When I spoke to tier 2 support they said that the Premiere was still only using half of the core which is why it's so slow. I also haven't read anything on their website saying that they started using both cores completely. If there is anything to read I'd love to read it.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> That's DD+ 5.1 in Netflix; VUDU has some DD+ 7.1 content, also passed through by a Roku untouched.


Mmm the only two audio options I had in the Roku setup was Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 and Stereo. Every time I tried playing Dolby Digital surround sound in Netflix I'd get no audio and the notice message from the tv about unsupported audio format. When I played the same titles on the PS3 and TiVo I'd have no problem.


----------



## mikeyts

Mike-Wolf said:


> Mmm the only two audio options I had in the Roku setup was Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 and Stereo. Every time I tried playing Dolby Digital surround sound in Netflix I'd get no audio and the notice message from the tv about unsupported audio format. When I played the same titles on the PS3 and TiVo I'd have no problem.


There are two audio options in Roku's settings, being "5.1 surround" and "stereo"; Dolby isn't mentioned at all, nor 7.1. You won't find Dolby mentioned in their UI or in any of their documentation; it is mentioned in channel UIs, but Roku generally has nothing to do with them. They don't license Dolby tech, saving on per unit materials cost. If they did, they could process the Dolby Digital Plus (aka E-AC-3) into basic Dolby Digital (AC-3); the conversion is supposedly simple and computationally lightweight. Most other streaming platforms have to license Dolby for other purposes (BD players, game consoles, TiVo). AFAIK, the only Roku channels to use DD+ are Netflix and VUDU. Amazon, HBO Go, Blockbuster and other channels with 5.1 sound use basic DD.


----------



## compnurd

Mike-Wolf said:


> When I spoke to tier 2 support they said that the Premiere was still only using half of the core which is why it's so slow. I also haven't read anything on their website saying that they started using both cores completely. If there is anything to read I'd love to read it.


Dont know what to tell you about Tier 2. Second Core was turned on during the Fall 2011 update. If you search on the forum you may find the release notes here The CPU only being half turned on/fully turned on has never been listed on there website


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> There are two audio options in Roku's settings, being "5.1 surround" and "stereo"; Dolby isn't mentioned at all, nor 7.1. You won't find Dolby mentioned in their UI or in any of their documentation; it is mentioned in channel UIs, but Roku generally has nothing to do with them. They don't license Dolby tech, saving on per unit materials cost. If they did, they could process the Dolby Digital Plus (aka E-AC-3) into basic Dolby Digital (AC-3); the conversion is supposedly simple and computationally lightweight. Most other streaming platforms have to license Dolby for other purposes (BD players, game consoles, TiVo). AFAIK, the only Roku channels to use DD+ are Netflix and VUDU. Amazon, HBO Go, Blockbuster and other channels with 5.1 sound use basic DD.


You're probably right. I know when I was using Amazon on demand I was receiving the Dolby signal (television has a Dolby D in the info bar when receiving a Dolby signal) But when I would go into Netflix and choose a program that had Dolby Digital Plus and boom no audio at all unless I chose Stereo.


----------



## Neomon

moyekj said:


> Lately I get V301 errors trying to start Netflix on Premieres which only a reboot of the TiVo resolves. Meanwhile the S3 OLED unit has no problems at all with Netflix during the same period...


Haven't seen a response to this yet, and it's the same problem I'm having. I'd like to know if there's a way to get that working that's not rebooting the Tivo.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

compnurd said:


> Dont know what to tell you about Tier 2. Second Core was turned on during the Fall 2011 update. If you search on the forum you may find the release notes here The CPU only being half turned on/fully turned on has never been listed on there website


Actually I found out about the half core issue _from_ this forum way back in 2010, however upon working with TiVo on several issues my customers have been having it was discovered that both cores were activated upon one of the 2012 software updates.


----------



## brycenesbitt

Back to the pause issue: there's a delay after you press pause before it pauses. Why?

If the issue is a round trip to a distant server, there's a solution. Pause immediately at the local box. Then (after it's paused) figure out where the server sits. Rewind the server so it starts from the right place.


----------



## rallykeeper

Getting the same v103 errors on our Premier XL too. Frankly have given up on TiVo ever getting Netflix right.


----------



## mikeyts

brycenesbitt said:


> Back to the pause issue: there's a delay after you press pause before it pauses. Why?


It's a bug. Netflix on my Sony BDP-S390 Blu-ray disc player has the same bug. Other players that I have (PS3, Roku 2, Roku 3, Panasonic BD player, Xbox and this PC) don't have it. There's no point in trying to diagnose the bug without any detailed knowledge of the internals of Netflix streaming.


----------



## aaronwt

mikeyts said:


> It's a bug. Netflix on my Sony BDP-S390 Blu-ray disc player has the same bug. Other players that I have (PS3, Roku 2, Roku 3, Panasonic BD player, Xbox and this PC) don't have it. There's no point in trying to diagnose the bug without any detailed knowledge of the internals of Netflix streaming.


So if the S390 has it then I guessing the S590 does too. I guess another reason I'm glad I picked up the S5100. It does not have a pause problem. I think my days of using Netflix on my TiVos are over for now. I'll probably revisit it again when updated TiVo hardware is released. So either when the Mini gets Netflix or the six tuner box is released.


----------



## moyekj

Like others I was having trouble getting consistent 1080p/24 out of TiVo Netflix and suffered through resolution changes a lot. Today in my Netflix account I discovered under my account settings->Manage video quality none of the 3 options was selected (options are good, better, best). So I enabled "best" quality and lo and behold I watched 5 episodes of Breaking Bad without being interrupted by resolution changes. Playback now starts at 720p and then quickly goes to 1080p/24 and stays there for duration. So either it's a big coincidence that things got better or that setting actually does something to help TiVo Netflix.


----------



## morac

moyekj said:


> Like others I was having trouble getting consistent 1080p/24 out of TiVo Netflix and suffered through resolution changes a lot. Today in my Netflix account I discovered under my account settings->Manage video quality none of the 3 options was selected (options are good, better, best). So I enabled "best" quality and lo and behold I watched 5 episodes of Breaking Bad without being interrupted by resolution changes. Playback now starts at 720p and then quickly goes to 1080p/24 and stays there for duration. So either it's a big coincidence that things got better or that setting actually does something to help TiVo Netflix.


That setting controls how much bandwidth Netflix uses (for people with broadband caps). As far as I'm aware the default, unless you've changed it in the past, is Best.


----------



## mikeyts

If it'd been set below "Best" you'd never have received 1080 res, at all. "Better" limits it to bandwidth that won't get you the best SD encode. It limits you to 1555 Kbps and the best SD encode is 1750 Kbps (2134 Kbps with 5.1 sound). They need to change those ranges up and add a new one to lock out "Super HD" for those who don't find it enough of an improvement over the "regular" 1080p to warrant the 50% increase in bandwidth consumption.


----------



## moyekj

morac said:


> That setting controls how much bandwidth Netflix uses (for people with broadband caps). As far as I'm aware the default, unless you've changed it in the past, is Best.


 As I said when I checked it none of the options were selected, which probably means the whole dynamic range was being used for streaming. Perhaps by selecting one of the options it limits the dynamic range a little, or could just be coincidence. Time will tell if behavior reverts back to what I was seeing before with lots of dropping in and out of 1080p/24.


----------



## mikeyts

I think it was a coincidence. With a setting of anything other than "Best" the best video you'll get is the 1050 Kbps 640x480 encode. I have no idea what you mean by "the whole dynamic range". Adaptive bit rate streamers always use all of the component video encodes if necessary; that Manage Video Quality setting just limits the highest bit rate one that you can use; "Best" is essentially unlimited.

I left that setting untouched for years until I was desperately trying to debug a problem (of course, setting it didn't help).


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> If it'd been set below "Best" you'd never have received 1080 res, at all. "Better" limits it to bandwidth that won't get you the best SD encode. It limits you to 1555 Kbps and the best SD encode is 1750 Kbps (2134 Kbps with 5.1 sound). They need to change those ranges up and add a new one to lock out "Super HD" for those who don't find it enough of an improvement over the "regular" 1080p to warrant the 50% increase in bandwidth consumption.


Certainly hope this doesn't happen. It's bad enough people don't understand the settings that are already there....


----------



## morac

Mike-Wolf said:


> Certainly hope this doesn't happen. It's bad enough people don't understand the settings that are already there....


The setting was basically put there for Canadians because of the Canadian ISPs ridiculously low overage caps (as low as 2 GB per month). The lowest cap in the U.S. is AT&T's 150 GB cap which is high enough to stream dozens of movies and TV shows a month at the "Best" setting.


----------



## mikeyts

morac said:


> The lowest cap in the U.S. is AT&T's 150 GB cap which is high enough to stream dozens of movies and TV shows a month at the "Best" setting.


Not true--Cox San Diego has a different cap for each network service tier (see this). The 1 Mbps down/384 Kbps up "Starter" tier has a 50 GB/month combined cap (down+up), the 3M/768K "Essential" tier has a 100 GB cap and the 3 tiers above that have 250-, 300- and 400 GB caps. My 25M/2M "Premiere" tier has a 300 GB/month cap; I rarely use more than half of it and I'm hardly the typical user. But that cap might be strained if I were sharing it with a wife and a couple of teens.

My problem is that Netflix has foisted these Super HD video encodes on us (if your ISP has signed up for access to their Open Connect CDN); the higher Super HD video encode is 5800 Kbps, half again the 3850 Kbps "regular" 1080p encode. I'm not convinced that you get anything significant for that, though there are people with larger screens who swear that the difference is clear to them. In any case, we should be able to set a 4234 Kbps limit (3850 Kbps video + 384 Kbps 5.1 sound, which'd work out to 2 GB/hour) so that they don't scarf down 50% more bandwidth for what may not be any significant improvement in PQ. Right now there's no way to stop it--if there's sufficient bandwidth on your connections to Netflix's servers you will get the Super HD encode, available for nearly all HD titles.

AVS Forum member msgohan compiled a large set of matched screen shots using his HDMI capture card and posted them in his "Netflix PS3 streaming comparison PIX" thread. He posted the same frame of many titles as played from multiple sources (Netflix, Blu-ray, iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, etc) and sometimes multiple quality levels per source. He's promised to collect some new caps for comparison with the originals and to each other. Are the new 3850 Kbps eyeIO-tech encodes actually equivalent to the old 4800 Kbps ones as Netflix claims? Are the 5800 Kbps encodes greatly sharper than the 3850 Kbps ones? I'm dying for answers to these and other questions.


----------



## moyekj

moyekj said:


> As I said when I checked it none of the options were selected, which probably means the whole dynamic range was being used for streaming. Perhaps by selecting one of the options it limits the dynamic range a little, or could just be coincidence. Time will tell if behavior reverts back to what I was seeing before with lots of dropping in and out of 1080p/24.


 Time has spoken and yes turns out it was just a coincidence as last night there were many jumps from 1080p/24 to 720p. Got so bad I had to turn off 1080p/24 and then I got a consistent 1080i feed without interruption. Not a big deal as on a 42" TV I don't really see much difference between 1080p and 1080i anyway.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> ...I don't really see much difference between 1080p and 1080i anyway.


Note that you _are_ getting the 1080p24 encode, it's just converting it to 1080i30. It does the same sort of thing to the 720p24 encode, displaying it as 720p60.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> Note that you _are_ getting the 1080p24 encode, it's just converting it to 1080i30. It does the same sort of thing to the 720p24 encode, displaying it as 720p60.


 Must be lower bit rate though since it holds at 1080i without reverting back to 720p.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Must be lower bit rate though since it holds at 1080i without reverting back to 720p.


No, it's not. If you have 720p and 1080i selected it will not use 720p except for the 720p24 encodes. The TiVo Premiere's player is one of only a couple in the devices that I have which will ramp up to the 1080p24 encode(s) even if you limit the output resolution to 720p, downconverting it for display; I think that the other one might be the Sony BDP-S390.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> No, it's not. If you have 720p and 1080i selected it will not use 720p except for the 720p24 encodes. The TiVo Premiere's player is one of only a couple in the devices that I have which will ramp up to the 1080p24 encode(s) even if you limit the output resolution to 720p, downconverting it for display; I think that the other one might be the Sony BDP-S390.


 That's not my experience. I have 720p & 1080i as valid outputs for my Premiere. When I 1st start playing a Netflix show it starts as 720p and then changes over to 1080i in about 30 seconds or so. When I had 720p, 1080i, 1080p as valid outputs for Premiere it would start at 720p and jump directly to 1080p. So my guess is without 1080p as a valid output I'm still getting 1080p encodes which TiVo is interlacing to 1080i, but for both cases I do get 720p initially.


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> So my guess is without 1080p as a valid output I'm still getting 1080p encodes which TiVo is interlacing to 1080i, but for both cases I do get 720p initially.


I haven't disputed that you don't get 720p initially. If you don't have 480i or 480p selected it's going to convert anything up to and including 720p to 720p60. What I was saying is that, if the TiVo is set up to output _only_ 720p, it will still ramp up to receive the 1080p24 encodes, downconverting them to 720p60. You can see this by playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with burned in bit-rate/resolution info.

If your ISP is not set up for access to Netflix's private Open Connect CDN, you will only receive one 1080p24 video encode at 3850 Kbps. If your ISP can access Open Connect then 4300- and 5800 Kbps "Super HD" 1080p24 encodes will also be available.


----------



## moyekj

mikeyts said:


> I haven't disputed that you don't get 720p initially. If you don't have 480i or 480p selected it's going to convert anything up to and including 720p to 720p60. What I was saying is that, if the TiVo is set up to output _only_ 720p, it will still ramp up to receive the 1080p24 encodes, downconverting them to 720p60. You can see this by playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with burned in bit-rate/resolution info.
> 
> If your ISP is not set up for access to Netflix's private Open Connect CDN, you will only receive one 1080p24 video encode at 3850 Kbps. If your ISP can access Open Connect then 4300- and 5800 Kbps "Super HD" 1080p24 encodes will also be available.


 Gotcha. Yes I've used that test clip to confirm my ISP does have access to "Super HD". I think the problem is a lot of times my node can't sustain the highest bit rates for prolonged periods. Is there a table somewhere where it lists all the incremental resolutions and bit rates that are used? Seems to me like perhaps towards the higher end of encodings there aren't enough of them so any little glitch throws it down to much lower bit rate. Does that test clip step through all the encodings and bit rates that are generally available for most titles?


----------



## mikeyts

moyekj said:


> Does that test clip step through all the encodings and bit rates that are generally available for most titles?


Actually on the TiVo it seems to have all of them. On other devices it drops 3 of the lowest bit-rate/resolution ones, the 235-, 384- and 750 Kbps video encodes (none of which show the burned-in info in TiVo's), leaving 560- (384x512), 1050- (480x640), 1750- (480x720), 2350-, 3000- (both 720x1280), 3800- (1080x1920), 4300- and 5800 Kbps (1080x1920 "Super HD") encodes. I think that'd be smart for them to drop those three low-end encoding for all titles and that might be where they're heading. If you don't have 560 Kbps for streaming then you should give it up (you should probably give it up if you don't have 2000 Kbps, what you'd need to 1750). I think that they figure that at the high end if you have enough bandwidth for any of 1080p encodes then you probably have much more than enough. I don't forsee them adding more 1080p encodes. If you have 1080p24 output enabled in your TiVo settings and bandwidth on your connections to TiVo is fluctuation such that it drops out of the lowest bit rate 1080p24 encode then you're screwed--I really don't think that they're going to add a 1080p24 encode at somewhere between the 3000 Kbps high 720p24 encode the 3850 Kbps low 1080p one. The solution is not to use TiVo's lame 1080p24 output setting--it's incompatible with Adaptive Bit-rate Streaming unless you know that available bandwidth on your connections to Netflix's servers will never drop below what's needed to stay ahead of the 3850 Kbps 1080p24 video encode (about 5 Mbps if you're using 5.1 channel DD+ audio).


----------



## aaronwt

mikeyts said:


> Actually on the TiVo it seems to have all of them. On other devices it drops 3 of the lowest bit-rate/resolution ones, the 235-, 384- and 750 Kbps video encodes (none of which show the burned-in info in TiVo's), leaving 560- (384x512), 1050- (480x640), 1750- (480x720), 2350-, 3000- (both 720x1280), 3800- (1080x1920), 4300- and 5800 Kbps (1080x1920 "Super HD") encodes. I think that'd be smart for them to drop those three low-end encoding for all titles and that might be where they're heading. If you don't have 560 Kbps for streaming then you should give it up (you should probably give it up if you don't have 2000 Kbps, what you'd need to 1750). I think that they figure that at the high end if you have enough bandwidth for any of 1080p encodes then you probably have much more than enough. I don't forsee them adding more 1080p encodes. If you have 1080p24 output enabled in your TiVo settings and bandwidth on your connections to TiVo is fluctuation such that it drops out of the lowest bit rate 1080p24 encode then you're screwed--I really don't think that they're going to add a 1080p24 encode at somewhere between the 3000 Kbps high 720p24 encode the 3850 Kbps low 1080p one. The solution is not to use TiVo's lame 1080p24 output setting--it's incompatible with Adaptive Bit-rate Streaming unless you know that available bandwidth on your connections to Netflix's servers will never drop below what's needed to stay ahead of the 3850 Kbps 1080p24 video encode (about 5 Mbps if you're using 5.1 channel DD+ audio).


My GFs 1.2 Mb/s DSL internet connection is rock solid on the TiVo. Granted it's only SD but it will play back the Netflix streaming without issues. I wish I could convince her to get FiOS, heck even Comcast, but she is adamant about not upgrading to a faster connection. Even though it would help her when she needs to connect to work.


----------



## mikeyts

aaronwt said:


> My GFs 1.2 Mb/s DSL internet connection is rock solid on the TiVo.


So it's probably enough to get her the 1050 Kbps 480x640 video encodes (maybe only 750 Kbps video, when you count sound). If she enjoys that then perhaps I was being elitist by saying that you should probably give it up if you have less than 2 Mbps of bandwidth . I still say that if you don't have at least the 800 Kbps that you'd need for 560 Kbps video encode + 192 Kbps stereo sound, you should definitely forget about streaming. They can safely dump the two encodes lower than that, speeding up the ramp up some.



mikeyts said:


> I really don't think that they're going to add a 1080p24 encode at somewhere between the 3000 Kbps high 720p24 encode the 3850 Kbps low 1080p one.


It occurs to me that they already much improved that situation--used to be that the high 720p encode was at 3600 Kbps and the sole 1080p encode was 4800 Kbps; they've made it so that you can get 1080p at a 25% lower rate, 3850 Kbps.


----------



## aaronwt

mikeyts said:


> So it's probably enough to get her the 1050 Kbps 480x640 video encodes (maybe only 750 Kbps video, when you count sound). If she enjoys that then perhaps I was being elitist by saying that you should probably give it up if you have less than 2 Mbps of bandwidth . I still say that if you don't have at least the 800 Kbps that you'd need for 560 Kbps video encode + 192 Kbps stereo sound, you should definitely forget about streaming. They can safely dump the two encodes lower than that, speeding up the ramp up some.
> ...............


I agree that she should have a faster internet connection. I have tried to convince her to get FiOS, but she never did. Even when they offered her FiOS with quick DSL speeds at a lower price she never got it.

I am just pleased that when I am at her house that I am still able to watch Netflix streaming on her slow DSL connection. I cannot do it with Amazon, Vudu, or Hulu+. But Netflix is still able to stream with that slow connection with no issues.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

moyekj said:


> Time has spoken and yes turns out it was just a coincidence as last night there were many jumps from 1080p/24 to 720p. Got so bad I had to turn off 1080p/24 and then I got a consistent 1080i feed without interruption. Not a big deal as on a 42" TV I don't really see much difference between 1080p and 1080i anyway.


That's interesting because I see a huge difference between 1080i and it switching to 1080p both in fluidity and motion smoothness and richness of the color gamut, on my 32inch Sony EX500 with it's 120Hz refresh rate. I'm on Comcast with a 53Mbps connection.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> No, it's not. If you have 720p and 1080i selected it will not use 720p except for the 720p24 encodes. The TiVo Premiere's player is one of only a couple in the devices that I have which will ramp up to the 1080p24 encode(s) even if you limit the output resolution to 720p, downconverting it for display; I think that the other one might be the Sony BDP-S390.


I wasn't aware there were 720p24 encodes let alone 720p encodes. Would you happen to know of any titles off the top of your head?


----------



## Mike-Wolf

aaronwt said:


> My GFs 1.2 Mb/s DSL internet connection is rock solid on the TiVo. Granted it's only SD but it will play back the Netflix streaming without issues. I wish I could convince her to get FiOS, heck even Comcast, but she is adamant about not upgrading to a faster connection. Even though it would help her when she needs to connect to work.


Man that's grounds for dismissal in my book to outright refuse a connection that isn't DSL. I would just outright refuse to go over there.


----------



## mikeyts

Mike-Wolf said:


> I wasn't aware there were 720p24 encodes let alone 720p encodes. Would you happen to know of any titles off the top of your head?


All titles which are labelled "Available in HD" on Netflix's site and marked as HD in the browser of whatever player you're using have 720p encodes, one at 2350 Kbps and a second at 3000 Kbps. Almost all such titles have 1080p encodes, at 3850-, 4300- and 5800 Kbps; the latter two bit rates are referred to as "Super HD" and are only available if your ISP is set up for access to Netflix's private Open Connect Content Distribution Network (CDN). If they're available you'll see the "Super HD" logos on title descriptions in TiVo's player. Some small subset of titles are marked "Available in HD on your TV" on Netflix's website (as opposed to just "Available in HD"); those titles do not have 1080 res encodes and cannot be played in HD at all in the website player or the Win8 Netflix app. If you have Super HD access you can tell which these are because they'll be marked simply "HD" in your player's browser's descriptions with no "Super HD" logo. (The whole Super HD logo thing has been a little sketchy lately, showing up for some titles and not others which do have the Super HD encodes; hopefully they'll fix that). You can check whether your ISP has Open Connect access at this page; there'll be a line in big green letters beneath the picture of a television reading "Your Internet Provider is ready for Super HD!".

The vast majority of Netflix video is encoded at 24p, being the framerate of the sources that they're given by their content providers. Some small amount of older US television is 30p (though lots of that is 24p) and British television is 25p. I've come across the rare oddball title like _Hugo_ which is encoded at 30p though it must have been shot at 24p and has some awful judder in panning scenes because of it (just watch the long tracking shot at the very beginning). If you want to determine the framerate of a title, play it in the website player, left-click the video to give it keyboard focus and type CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-D to bring up a diagnostic overlay; read the frame rate from the "Video Frames (rendered/dropped)" line.

Try playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with burned in display of bit-rate/resolution info.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> All titles which are labelled "Available in HD" on Netflix's site and marked as HD in the browser of whatever player you're using have 720p encodes, one at 2350 Kbps and a second at 3000 Kbps. Almost all such titles have 1080p encodes, at 3850-, 4300- and 5800 Kbps; the latter two bit rates are referred to as "Super HD" and are only available if your ISP is set up for access to Netflix's private Open Connect Content Distribution Network (CDN). If they're available you'll see the "Super HD" logos on title descriptions in TiVo's player. Some small subset of titles are marked "Available in HD on your TV" on Netflix's website (as opposed to just "Available in HD"); those titles do not have 1080 res encodes and cannot be played in HD at all in the website player or the Win8 Netflix app. If you have Super HD access you can tell which these are because they'll be marked simply "HD" in your player's browser's descriptions with no "Super HD" logo. (The whole Super HD logo thing has been a little sketchy lately, showing up for some titles and not others which do have the Super HD encodes; hopefully they'll fix that). You can check whether your ISP has Open Connect access at this page; there'll be a line in big green letters beneath the picture of a television reading "Your Internet Provider is ready for Super HD!".
> 
> The vast majority of Netflix video is encoded at 24p, being the framerate of the sources that they're given by their content providers. Some small amount of older US television is 30p (though lots of that is 24p) and British television is 25p. I've come across the rare oddball title like _Hugo_ which is encoded at 30p though it must have been shot at 24p and has some awful judder in panning scenes because of it (just watch the long tracking shot at the very beginning). If you want to determine the framerate of a title, play it in the website player, left-click the video to give it keyboard focus and type CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-D to bring up a diagnostic overlay; read the frame rate from the "Video Frames (rendered/dropped)" line.
> 
> Try playing "Example Short 23.976", a test clip with burned in display of bit-rate/resolution info.


On my TiVo Premiere I see the majority of the HD programming marked as "Super HD" even though I have Comcast and last I checked they aren't a Super HD partner. When I try playing that Example Short 23.976 video it plays for half a second and an error message appears on screen saying that it cannot connect to the Netflix service. I've not received this specific message on any other program but that one.


----------



## mikeyts

Mike-Wolf said:


> On my TiVo Premiere I see the majority of the HD programming marked as "Super HD" even though I have Comcast and last I checked they aren't a Super HD partner. When I try playing that Example Short 23.976 video it plays for half a second and an error message appears on screen saying that it cannot connect to the Netflix service. I've not received this specific message on any other program but that one.


Hmmm. Apparently TiVo is one of the devices which shows those logos even if your ISP isn't set up for you to get the encodes. I know that Roku 3 is one. It may be that Netflix has decided to show them in all those standard UI players whether you can get the encodes or not. Since my provider, Cox, is set up for Open Connect I can no longer test what happens if you're not.

There was a bug with "Example Short" such that no one could play it if not using Open Connect servers. I know that it was briefly fixed; it may be broken again You could sign up for a free trial at Unblock-US.com; it'll let you sample Super HD and watch titles that are available on Netflix in other regions but not in the US.


----------



## mikeyts

mikeyts said:


> Some small subset of titles are marked "Available in HD on your TV" on Netflix's website (as opposed to just "Available in HD"); those titles do not have 1080 res encodes and cannot be played in HD at all in the website player or the Win8 Netflix app.


BTW, I recently discovered that that's not entirely true. If HDYTV titles are old enough, they'll be available in 1080 res on embedded devices. Newer ones (last couple of years at least) will be 720p-only.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

mikeyts said:


> Hmmm. Apparently TiVo is one of the devices which shows those logos even if your ISP isn't set up for you to get the encodes. I know that Roku 3 is one. It may be that Netflix has decided to show them in all those standard UI players whether you can get the encodes or not. Since my provider, Cox, is set up for Open Connect I can no longer test what happens if you're not.
> 
> There was a bug with "Example Short" such that no one could play it if not using Open Connect servers. I know that it was briefly fixed; it make be broken again You could sign up for a free trial at Unblock-US.com; it'll let you sample Super HD and watch titles that are available on Netflix in other regions but not in the US.


I know that my PS3 and Windows 8 is dynamic regarding the SuperHD badge because when I was using an OpenConnect proxy they were there but when I went off the proxy they were gone.


----------

