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Perkins Cobb wrote:The Blue Underground gialli that I'm testing on Netflix streaming all have a pronounced stutter in the motion throughout. See, for instance, The Bloodstained Shadow or The Pyjama Girl Case. Can anyone else confirm this?

I just watched The Black Belly of the Tarantula and didn't have any issues.

Fellini's I clowns is up.

Edit: actually, I'm getting a "Title temporarily unavailable" error on the latter.

Perkins Cobb wrote:The Blue Underground gialli that I'm testing on Netflix streaming all have a pronounced stutter in the motion throughout. See, for instance, The Bloodstained Shadow or The Pyjama Girl Case. Can anyone else confirm this? It's very obvious on my plasma; less so on my laptop. I just watched something else that looked fine, so it's not an issue of a temporary server or ISP slowdown.

Yeah, I have the same problem. I've seen that on a couple other titles, although I don't remember what.

More pronounced is a frame rate problem that pops up, where it looks like every third frame is missing and a duplicate frame is inserted instead (or something along those lines). Hammer's Twins of Evil had this, rendering it unwatchable, and I've seen it on several other movies (like 20 minutes of Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw).

Pardon the ignorance, but how can you tell if something's streaming in HD on Netflix? or do you guys happen to just have an eye for it?

When you're watching, it says "HD" in the bottom right corner.

On a Roku 2 though, gone are those quality dots and HD notification, so you just have to sort of judge for yourself. Not sure why this has been done away with.

I should clarify--it shows up for me on the status bar right under the film's timeline, which only appears on my computer when I jostle the mouse. Is this not displayed when you watch on a Roku?

Also, I should really be using past tense here--my streaming capability ended effective today. :-"

The "HD" notation appears on the menu screen when viewing on a Sony Blu-ray player. But it's pretty obvious which films are: the HD encoded ones will have a good DVD-quality image (and slightly better in some cases) whereas the standard definition ones will look like VHS or worse.

Drucker wrote:Pardon the ignorance, but how can you tell if something's streaming in HD on Netflix? or do you guys happen to just have an eye for it?

They used to list this very prominently in the metadata on the website, but now they've basically vanished it ... a typically Netflixian response to complaints about image quality. Easiest way to verify now may be to look up the title at Instantwatcher.com.

Like swo, I've also just let my Netflix subscription lapse, so I can't check Black Belly vs. the other Blue Undergrounds for myself.

The streaming of the entire series of The Twilight Zone (original), Star Trek (original) and Mad Men (first four seasons) ok, and Weeds, will keep me distracted enough not to complain. lol

I really have to stop coming into threads like this and being reminded of how woefully fucking inadequate netflix canada's selection is. Oy.

ando wrote:The streaming of the entire series of The Twilight Zone (original), Star Trek (original) and Mad Men (first four seasons) ok, and Weeds, will keep me distracted enough not to complain. lol

I don't care if you stream the other two but please get the Blu-rays of The Twilight Zone and Mad Men!

Why?

mfunk9786 wrote:Why?

Because they're worth seeing in the best possible format.

HD streams aren't good enough?

Surely someone more technical can give a better answer, but HD streams to me only ever look like the quality of a good DVD.

Man, as a recent Roku convert, I couldn't disagree more.

Admittedly, I haven't watched that much HD streaming (and I've canceled it now so that's not something that will change) and surely not all HD transfers are equal. Does anyone know the technical specs of Netflix's HD streams? Are they 1080p?

Nope, Netflix's HD streams are only 720p. Will you notice the difference vs. Blu-ray on a less-than humongous TV setup? Probably not. I've had some good (as in, probably better than DVD) streaming experiences on my plasma, especially with new TV shows like Sons of Anarchy and Better Off Ted. But some of those have been compromised by bandwidth loss or outages from my ISP or Netflix, and for something really important, I'd fork over for a Blu-ray (at least a rental) just to avoid that possibility. And I still don't think lateral camera motion looks quite right via streaming, although maybe if you have a better device and/or connection than I do, that flaw goes away.

Plus, the extras on Mad Men and especially The Twilight Zone are essential, so that's another reason to hold out for the Blu. Heck, I'm even in the Mad Men extras briefly, so you'd get to see what a fellow CF member looks like.

They're now 1080p on the Roku 2, FYI.

Netflix uses heavy compression on their streams, so the HD claim is misleading. The very best looking streams from them are still not as good as DVD quality.

"When is HD Video Streaming Not Really High Definition?"

Unless I have serious retinal issues, I have to disagree with the "still not as good as DVD quality" claim - the HD streams look very nice to my eye, if not as good as Blu-ray, certainly quite a bit better than DVD. But of course, certain people love to make brash claims that can't be substantiated so they get attention, so... yeah.

Best-case scenario (which is still a minority, I think), yeah, Netflix HD streaming is an improvement over the equivalent DVD. Really hard to argue the contrary. And I hope they continue to improve, because it looks like we'll be stuck with streaming pretty soon, however good or bad it happens to be.

mfunk, is everything HD transmitted at 1080 on the Roku?

mfunk9786 wrote:Unless I have serious retinal issues, I have to disagree with the "still not as good as DVD quality" claim - the HD streams look very nice to my eye, if not as good as Blu-ray, certainly quite a bit better than DVD. But of course, certain people love to make brash claims that can't be substantiated so they get attention, so... yeah.

I don't think using facts like 720p vs. 1080p are brash.

mfunk9786 wrote:They're now 1080p on the Roku 2, FYI.

I have a hard time believing that there are separate 720p and 1080p streaming transfers of HD films, the latter of which are exclusive to the Roku 2. It seems more likely that the Roku is 1080p-capable, and perhaps upscales everything to that level. Or vice versa, the streams have always been 1080p, but haven't been able to be seen at full resolution until the Roku 2?

Aox, I just meant that even if they don't look as good as Blu, they look better than DVD. Across the board.