Finally, something to get excited about for my PS3 and it was not Sony who did the work.
Remember when I told you I would be first in line if Netflix made a disc for PS3? Well lied, I was probably not the first but none the less, I am eagerly waiting for my disc in the mail. Thank you Netflix, the PS3 is your blu-ray slave, and soon it will be able to stream as well. Playon has one less thing to push to my PS3.
Back in the day, I use to put 20 dollars aside every week. It was my happy money. My friends and I would forgo lunch and head out to Bestbuy on Tuesdays to pick up a just released DVD. During that night, and almost every subsequent night thereafter, I would watch the just purchased DVD over and over till I have memorized most of the dialog and looped killer scenes for A/V demos. I was proud of my DVD collection, that all changed with Netflix. Even though I have moved on to Blu-ray, I have not purchased a movie in three years. Why bother? continue reading…
I do not have a cool Roku box (would like one though) or an xbox 360 (will never happen), so for my family to enjoy Netflix streaming in the living room, I took an old laptop I had and rebuilt it with the most basic installs of Windows XP (Netflix at the time did not run on anything else). Connecting the lappy to my 52″ LCD through VGA and setting the external display to 1920×1080 60Hz, I had a nice looking computer desktop! Using a bluetooth keyboard, wireless G connection on DSL, and mini-rca audio out to the TV, I had a functional Netflix/Hulu/Joost player for the fam.
Lately we have been watching a lot of streaming movies (makes sense since we do not have cable/satellite just OTA), and starting to enjoy the higher bitrates Netflix has been pumping out, especially newer films at 3400 Kbps. The sharpness is very similar to DVD and nicely saturated with minimal motion artifacts. It makes watching ‘The Office’ or ‘Heroes’ episodes we missed just a bit more enjoyable. Below is a futile attempt at showing a sample clip of LOTR using my Zi6. Keep up the good work Netflix, looking forward to more content like this!
As I start to build the object map of my app that will be built on the Android SDK, I begin to think of what APIs I would like to use. Google’s set is a no brainer but what about other tools? A silly thought crossed my mind on how cool it would be to watch 30 Rock or Heroes on the G1 from Netflix. No sooner did that nugget hit my grey matter, Engadget posted that Netflix will open it’s API to all developers. My mind is flooded with possibilities. NO MORE MS IE for instant watch (I hope anyways). Life is golden.
I complained a lot on why anyone would stream movies over the Internet, especially services that claim to stream true HD (the key here kiddies is TRUE HD). Well, over the last couple of months, I took a very old laptop that had a decent video card and hooked it up to my Sony 52XBR4 set. I have two wireless access points, one upstairs in the master closet and one downstairs in the office to ensure I have no dropouts. I hate to admit but the quality was actually not that bad on the set and there were no buffering issues streaming Netflix movies over a wireless connection on the LCD. I also love the fact that any movie we stopped midway through to watch at another time will start where we last left off. As much as we enjoy the convenience of streaming our movies, I am not sure a Netflix stream would look good blown up to 106″ but I will like to give it a try. It seems I may have the opportunity as there is some talk out there that Netflix may be thinking of giving PS3 owners a disc to fire up the movie stream. I know Sony is about to release their own service so I am curious on how this will all pan out. It may just noise but if it does turn out to be true, I will be first in line to pick up a disc.
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