Comments on: Netflix Hits TiVo – In HD!

By: Roku’s New Boxes Highlight Where TiVo is Failing in OTT Content | Gizmo Lovers Blog

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:36:10 +0000

[...] Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.Let’s start with TiVo’s Netflix support. When it launched, back in December 2008, TiVo’s Netflix implementation was basically as functional as its contemporaries. There were [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:24:38 +0000

I didn’t have any problems during the day yesterday, but at night I was booted to the main menu. Ehh, it’s new.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:54:33 +0000

I had the same problems Patrick described (as did my Mom, when I activated her account). I suspect it was first day curiosity overwhelming Netflix. When I was able to reconnect, I was able to pickup where I left off.

The quality was pretty good, but haven’t watched anything that might lend to compression artifacts (Pertwee episode of Dr. Who, Hoax & Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic).

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:37:36 +0000

I’ve enjoyed Netflix on Xbox and was really looking forward to Netflix on Tivo – one less thing to turn on/one less remote, etc. But, my first attempt to watch on Tivo tonight has been a disaster. Several times I was either dumped to the main menu or live TV. When it was playing, it kept pausing to adjust buffering speed. Add in the incredibly slow menu access to Video on Demand and then to Netflix. It got so bad I tried switching back to XBox to finish the movie. But no dice there either – it seems if you start watching a movie on one device, you can’t finish watching on another..

I’ll give it another shot in a day or two, but I’m thinking this may have been released a bit early.

By: rbiro

rbiro — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:28:36 +0000

You can’t browse Play It Now content from the TiVo. You have to identify shows from the Web page and add it to your Play It Now pseudo-queue. It is that list which shows up on the TiVo.
I was quite underwhelmed with the picture quality on my 42″ Plasma. I watched the first 5 minutes of Heros, Season 2, Episode 1. Like most over-compressed content, in the middle a scene without significant camera motion – aka virtually static image – the quality is good. But it takes a full second or more to recover from scene changes, explosions or general action scenes. The pixelation from over compression is just ridiculous. I assume they are using some form of fixed compression instead of a more dynamic algorithm that can give better fidelity for short bursts.

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:44:57 +0000

That’s the problem with ‘HD’ – anything 720p or above can be called HD. But there is no accounting for compression levels. 720p VC-1 streaming video at 4Mbps is HD, so is 1080p VC-1 Blu-ray video at 40mbps. Clearly there is going to be a quality difference.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:39:26 +0000

I started watching Season 2 of 30 Rock, and the bar in the middle of the screen did say “HD”. It looks great but HD? ehh…maybe.

By: ljk

ljk — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:12:53 +0000

i configured one of my s3′s last night.
i see no hd content.
anyone found/streamed any hd content from netflix?

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:43:21 +0000

Dude, this is awesome. I’m gonna get a lot of use out of it.