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Movie streaming

We recently bought a new TV which is one of the "Smart TVs" with some apps built in such as Netflix and Acetrax.

At the same time I've finally managed to stabilise my broadband connection so it can stream movies reliably in HD.

We've watched a couple of films on Acetrax - we got a free credit when we joined.

But the choice isn't great. Recently saw "The Pelican Brief" again and thought I'd have a look for other John Grisham films (other than The Firm), nothing on Acetrax. These films are not new blockbusters, so you'd have thought they might be in the catalogues which are seemingly rather random.

Looking at Netflix - the app just wants your card details before you can get anywhere. You can "browse selection" online, but not actually search it. When you "browse" each page has about 10 movies on it per genre.

Is that all that's actually on Netflix e.g. "browse selection" means "everything we have"?

I'm guessing that for a wider range you need something like LoveFilm but the TV doesn't have a "Lovefilm" app so I'm guessing I can only stream it to the computer (unless I connected the computer to the TV, which isn't an option as they're too far apart - the TV can access "Windows Media Server" on the PC over the network and see everything that has, though)

Am I missing something, or does home watching still involve putting stuff in your Blockbuster list online and waiting for the DVD/Blu-Ray in the post or popping down to the local rental place?
 
Sadly Netflix doesn't do as good of a job as LOVEFiLM of presenting what content it has to offer. The "browse selection" is more of a summary and they do have a lot more to offer. We covered this in our recent comparison of movie streaming services.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ovie-download-and-web-streaming-services.html

I think Netflix now has around 1,500 movies in its library but annoyingly they don't give you a better idea of what's on offer until you subscribe, which never made much sense to me.

Also some services don't have licensing deals with all the studios, which means that a lot of content might not be available on one service but could be on another. For the best coverage you really need both Netflix and LOVEFiLM.
 
It does seem odd that Netflix doesn't allow you to really browse what they have. It makes cynical people like me suspect there isn't, actually, all that much and so I never get any further with it. If it's so great, why hide what it has? ;)

Lovefilm seems to stream to some Samsung and Sony TVs, we did nearly buy a Sony one but it was out of stock and everyone told us to go for Panasonic, we had a Samsung one initially but took it back for a refund as the build quality was poor and it rattled. The Panasonic TV does seem very good though.

Acetrax seems to be the one that's supplied on the Panasonic "app store" thing so unless Lovefilm tie up some deal with Panasonic to get their service on that platform it seems to be out for now (it does note "updates available" and you can "download" new apps on to it, but nothing movie related thus far).

That said, I actually watched our very first Blu-Ray last night (I know, well behind the times, we've had the player for a while but I didn't get around to updating my Blockbuster rental list until last week) and while the film was a bit average (Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol - lots of nice set pieces for 3D linked by an absurd thinly threaded "plot") the picture quality was absolutely incredible.

Don't think our broadband is up to streaming at that definition though - I thought that needed about 12Mbps. Is Blu-Ray about 2.5x the definition of HDTV?
 
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Ive catalogued whats available on Netflix UK (or rather did back in March of this year, so its a little out of date, theres websites to get the Full USA list) If you want and it helps in anyway i can strip it down to movie title, sort it alphabetically and upload it somewhere as a plain text file or similar.
 
Well you wouldn't want to stream a Blu-Ray anyway as the raw streams can hit 30Mbps+ :), though it does vary depending upon your codec and all sorts of other factors. But don't get HD and Blu-Ray confused, HD consists of several video quality standards while BR is all about the storage medium.

I believe Netflix streams HD at about 5Mbps, though it's not really full HD quality like you'd expect from a BR. Still a good HD stream delivered to a good HD TV still gives you good results.
 
Ive catalogued whats available on Netflix UK (or rather did back in March of this year, so its a little out of date, theres websites to get the Full USA list) If you want and it helps in anyway i can strip it down to movie title, sort it alphabetically and upload it somewhere as a plain text file or similar.

That would be quite useful...

Went into it [Acetrax] this evening and saw it had "The Hunger Games", a book many people raved about now made into a film.

So we watched it.

While I'm sure that the book is very good it was quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen. I don't even know where to begin... ;)
 
"Teen" films usually fall into the "Twilight" category of entertainment and are perhaps best left to the kids :) . Mind you even some kids I know advised me never to check out The Hunger Games hehe.
 
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That would be quite useful...

Went into it [Acetrax] this evening and saw it had "The Hunger Games", a book many people raved about now made into a film.

So we watched it.

While I'm sure that the book is very good it was quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen. I don't even know where to begin... ;)

Here you go...
http://www27.zippyshare.com/v/8166254/file.html
Hope it helps

Remember it was done back around March 2012 time though so things like Hunger games wont be on it.

I didnt think the Hunger Games movie was too bad, far from good but no worse than some of the dross nowadays.
 
Thanks very much. On the strength of that we signed up and the first thing we watched was... part 3 of the "Cracker" (Robbie Coltrane) series that has been playing out on ITV3. Now that's outstanding. Never seen it before until I caught it by chance a couple of weeks back.

A bit disturbing really since Fitz is a psychologist, one of my keen interests is psychology and we have more than a few things in common good and bad ;)

Then we watched a film I've wanted to see based on recommendations, "Drive" which was quite good.

"The Hunger Games" - well, was hardly an original story. Someone has read some Stephen King (Arnie's "The Running Man" which still holds up pretty well even today), and some John Wyndham (The Tripods). And put them together.

Still, it had promise. The book was well received. And so to the film.

It looks like someone abridged the book very badly and then shot a series of scenes and tried to make it a little Harry Potter-esque.

The whole thing has a "sterile" feel to it.

The acting is crap.

The camerawork is crap.

The screenplay is crap.

The dialogue is crap.

There are enormous gaps and questions about the plot/the "new world order" papered over by the people running the Games popping up to explain them for the benefit of the audience now and again.

No real sense of suspense or tension is built approaching the start of the Games.

The "luvvie" type characters are totally stereotypical.

There is no character development whatsoever, so you don't really care about what actually happens to the people and their relationships seem risible. I know it was a book for kids (MarkJ's point, and well made), but even the Harry Potter films - dull and overlong and tedious though they are IMO - develop the characters into something believable (as far as it can get for wizardry)

I tend to flick through stuff on there and then look at the IMDB rating as it's rarely wrong. Above 6.5 and it's worth watching. That one got over 7. Yet when you read the user reviews most of them give it 1 out of 10 so I can't see how it got the score it did.

I probably have seen worse films, but I struggle to call one to mind.

But then this isn't a film review site ;) I'm still amazed at just how bad it was, that's all... :)

I'll have to keep an eye on the data usage as I feel we're going to get through it pretty quickly now.
 
Oh, one more question :)

When we were watching the Blu-Ray, on scenes with an incredible amount of detail such as the overhead views of the City which move, just momentarily there were tiny pauses - almost imperceptible but not quite.

To imagine this, think of an old laptop with dozens of windows open at once and you suddenly bring one back up that's been dormant for a while (e.g. in the swapfile, so it has to page) and you get a "pause" as the graphics card and HDD struggle for resources.

The Blu-Ray player was a gift and I think it's only about £70 (not knocking the gift, though) and the HDMI lead was also a gift which I think is a cheap one from Sainsburys.

The TV has no detectable motion blur or glitching at all, even with sport/fast action, but then that's HDTV not Blu-Ray. For instance the tennis on BBC HD was absolutely perfect. Not that I give two hoots about tennis. It was just the first thing we put on when we got the TV.

It's hardly "bad", it's just that I noticed it a few times. What's the most likely culprit here?

Yes, I don't watch that much TV and all the kit, which people have had for years, is new to us ;)
 
Are you running it wirelessly? try it hard wired if you are. Scenes like you describe will often be at the higher bitrate end of things meaning you need a decent connection, is your internet faster than about 6Mb?

Oh and you are welcome for the list, at some point ill have to update it, few months old and alot isnt on it, glad it gave you an idea of what was available though :)
 
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It's not the streaming that has that slight "glitch", streaming works fine. I think "Drive" came down in HD judging by the amount of data it got through. The connection can run at anything between 6 and 12 Meg but doesn't really drop below 6.

It's the Blu-Ray - it does look like something is struggling to shift that much data that quickly when you have a wide panorama view in high detail - a bit like a processor just isn't quite fast enough or the data isn't getting from the player to the TV in a fast enough stream.
 
Oh right, sorry i thought you were refering to streaming.

have you checked (if it allows it) if there is a firmware update for the player? Also if it has any menu functions often named things like "cinema" mode "film" mode etc try enabling and disabling them. They can often lead to weird picture processing, normally they try to make panning scenes more smooth, some people like the effect i personally hate it.

Infact any extra picture processing options try turning on and off ONE at a time to see if that cures the issue.

Also does this happen at specific points in specific movies or is it just random? If its specific points it could be something as simple as the layer break on the disk, though that was AFAIK only an issue with really old players.
 
Sorry. Just my rambling post style.

We have the downstairs kit connected up with home plugs. (Roof antenna > E367 HSPA modem > Edimax Router > Powerplug > Powerplug > TV). When I got those I just bought the ones with a single ethernet output so I've never connected the DVD player to it, the ethernet goes to the TV. I'll plug the DVD player in and see if there's an update. I could always get a switch and connect both.

What you describe sounds very feasible - it does look like a "processing" issue - there's "too much going on at once". Like I said it's very marginal and only affected the scenes with overhead shots of a whole city (incredible detail) panning left to right - it's like something couldn't quite cope. Shall try out the display settings.

Is there any merit to buying one of those expensive HDMI cables? When I was more into Hi-Fi I did notice a difference when I upgraded from cheap speaker cable to the more expensive stuff. Might that be a factor?
 
....
Is there any merit to buying one of those expensive HDMI cables? When I was more into Hi-Fi I did notice a difference when I upgraded from cheap speaker cable to the more expensive stuff. Might that be a factor?

NOPE they are an utter waste of money, the only time higher quality cabling within the HDMI lead itself would help is if it were a very long cable (like over 50 metres), and even then that would only likely affect the wire/s in the cable that carry power (IE normally just 5volt wire on pin 18 in the cable). Thicker cable for carrying voltage is a good thing, for carrying digital data (IE most of the other pins what carry the actual sound and picture info) its not gonna make a blind bit of difference.

As butler points out. HDMI is a digital signal, its not like analogue cabling (such as old style phono cabling for hifi) with a digtal signal and cable carrying it you generally either get something the other the other end or you dont.

A £1-2 couple of metres HDMI cable (yes you can find them that cheap) will do just as good a job as a £100 2 metre cable.

If you really want to try another cable (personally i doubt that is your issue) then buy another cheap cable, do not waste your money on a nicely boxed but over priced one. Dont waste £100 on a cable, for that you may as well buy a new Bluray player lol.
 
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