Comments on: Netflix watch-instantly service needs to cook a little longer

By: Daniel Choi

Daniel Choi — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:31:57 +0000

Just launched: a website to help people find titles for instant watching on Netflix.

By: Nathan Beaman

Nathan Beaman — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:24:49 +0000

I definitely plan on checking out helvetica.

Even the high quality netflix stream blows. I wish they could team up with apple somehow to use the apple tv with similar quality. The apple tv rentals look awesome, just gets expensive fast. Boxxee on Apple tv varies in quality a ton though. Some stuff looks fantastic and other stuff looks like you’re playing a YouTube video on a giant screen.

By: Gregory Giordano

Gregory Giordano — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:34:18 +0000

Katie L. said:
“…BTW, Helvetica is AMAZING. And I see Helvetica EVERYWHERE now.”

and so you should- and so you shall.

i know you all will think me a paid shill for NFlx- but only a few times did i have problems. now i am on windows xp and i hear that can be a deal breaker still for their viewer. the only time i had problems was on comcast’s end(bottlenecks or simple asinine issues with too many people using their cable modem in my neighborhood, wtf) making it necessary to wait n cache. mostly, like 90% of time when i used it i was happy. now i gave all that up for direct download warez for my tv and movies. fuck torrents- DDL, babeez!

By: Charity

Charity — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:26:03 +0000

I have been watching the Netflix online movies for a quite while. Back when I started, you could only use IE – I didn’t even know that they made it available for Firefox.

The picture quality varies with the movie. I watched all of seasons 1-3 of Sliders and the quality was crystal clear, but pretty much everything in the Starz play menu is awful.

We used to get the speed/loading issue a lot, but only at the end of the month. We always thought Comcast was throttling our bandwidth because we were watching movies all of the time.

Now that we only watch movies once in a while, we never have a problem with it.

That’s too bad that it is not working well for you because it is a nice feature.

By: Neil C

Neil C — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:46:17 +0000

I’ve had remarkably few problems watching movies on Netflix site, apart from the fact that they LOOK LIKE SHIT. Like, badly recorded, blown-up YouTube shit. But y’know, complain, complain — they’re just going to put a USB port in our skulls sooner or later and I’m sure we’ll find something wrong with THAT nonsense too. Sheesh!

By: Katie L.

Katie L. — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:36:47 +0000

Funny, I had the same problem with my first instant watch–”Jesus is Magic.” The next film I tried–”Helvetica,” as a matter of fact–worked well, though. I wonder if it really does calibrate, or whatever it is it claims it’s doing.

BTW, Helvetica is AMAZING. And I see Helvetica EVERYWHERE now.

By: billsimmon

billsimmon — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:11:08 +0000

Nates,

Good points. I’ll try Safari. I also notice that a lot of the Starz movies are in 4:3 pan and scan! Perish the thought!

By: Nate Orshan

Nate Orshan — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:53:55 +0000

And then there’s the issue of the inherent image quality, which, especially for everything in the new Starz catalog, is so eye-squintingly fuzzy you may think you need a new prescription. (Though I’m on the lowest rung of the pricing tiers, so maybe they intentionally jack up the compression ratios at my service level.)

By: Nathan Beaman

Nathan Beaman — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:42:59 +0000

ive had the same loading issue with a variety of sites – not you tube though. Wonder what the deal is?

Have you tried watching the netflix stuff in safari? thats what ive been using and havent had any lag issues, but then again ive only watched a small handful of movies so far. But my connection does suck and its still not lagging.

i wish i could watch them on my apple tv – but it doesnt support silverlight yet.

Have you checked out boxee at all yet?

By: billsimmon

billsimmon — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:27:18 +0000

Nate,

The pre-loading problem is not a Firefox issue. I just tested it with YouTube and had no problem loading a long youtube video on a tab that wasn’t active. I’ve upped my cache limit in FF but it was set at 50 MB which should be enough.