LG High-Def TVs To Stream Netflix Videos

DJAdapt writes to tell us that LG has launched a new line of high definition TVs that will be capable of streaming Netflix videos with no additional hardware. This is just another in a long line of expansions from the once DVD rental service, which has expanded to the Roku set top box, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux platforms recently. "Piping movies directly to TV sets is the natural evolution of the video streaming service, said Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix. "The TV symbolizes the ultimate destination," he said. That idea -- shared by Sony Corp., which already streams feature films and TV shows directly to its Bravia televisions -- is still in its early stages. Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles, while the company's DVD menu numbers more than 100,000 titles. Hastings expects that gap will "definitely narrow" over time, but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios."

Comments

...and TiVo HD

[HaeMaker]

don't forget TiVo HD and Series 3.

Re:...and TiVo HD

[hansamurai]

or the Xbox 360. My wife and I have using Blockbuster the last two years for our movies and our switching to Netflix because of the streaming service (just got a 360 for Christmas). The only thing we're losing is the ability to trade our mailed DVDs in at the store for real rentals. Though we didn't do that often, what's the point of going to the store when they're mailed to us anyway?

Soon it will be what's the point of going to the mailbox when I can stream it. Though the current selection is not that great, I will admit.

Re:...and TiVo HD

[the eric conspiracy]

I found that switching to decaf is an alternative solution.

DVDs

[iluvcapra]

but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios

And you can hold them and touch them, resell them, and duplicate them for safekeeping, and you can play them a thousand times without having to engage a "service." They are property. How is this latest innovation any different from the old Divx?

Re:DVDs

[Hodar]

I use this service, and I love it.

I subscribe to the cheapest program they have, I get 1 DVD at a time - which with several Redbox units nearby, is really not that big of a deal.

However, I can que up 50 or so movies from my account that I 'might' want to watch on my XBox. Like, seasons 1-4 of The Office. I watch each episode when I want, no rental, no return, no hassles. The quality was about the same as watching a VHS tape player when I had 4 Mbps internet service, and improved remarkabaly when I upgraded to 6Mbsp cable.

Is it blue ray? Nope. Is it as good as DVD? Depends - some yes, most no. Typically, it's about the same quality as over the air programming - but it's a listing of what I care to watch, when I care to watch it.

If it weren't for this feature, I'd drop Netflix. Streaming movies is so much more convenient than adding movies to my already obscene collection. Some movies you may want to watch 1 or 2x and are not worth buying - this fits this niche perfectly.

Re:DVDs

[mr_matticus]

How is this latest innovation any different from the old Divx?

Because there is no waste--no physical medium, no risk of damage before being able to watch. There is also no time limit. You can stream any title as long as it is available.

And you can hold them and touch them, resell them, and duplicate them for safekeeping, and you can play them a thousand times without having to engage a "service."

There are drawbacks to everything. Yes, you can hold and touch DVDs, which means you can lose and break them (and even with backups, you still have to be able to prove legitimate possession). You can resell them, yes, but you also have to pay a one-time fixed amount for production and higher distribution cost, as well as wait for them to arrive (or leave your home to acquire them), and buy them individually at the same price, whether you want to watch it twice or two hundred times. You can play them until you damage, sell, or lose them--but you also need a player that will break down or become obsolete.

On the other hand, with digital subscription services, you can watch a huge library of titles at any time on any compatible player (which Netflix is expanding). Sure, they also save quite a bit of money and the enjoyment of the service is dependent on the existence of both the service and Internet connectivity. Connections are insufficient to match BD quality. The library of tiles kind of sucks (much like BD!). But many of the big drawbacks are a result of newness.

Yes, streaming systems will likely always have some kind of DRM to prevent reproduction, and will require an ongoing account. But if you can play any one of tens of thousands of films on screens small and large, there's no actual need to "own" any slice of the content.

Selling limited-rights copies was a compromise to get people to pay for productions that cost more than theater sales could recoup, and where customers wanted to see films after the theater run. The studios need to run a business, the artists need money to produce their works, and consumers want to be entertained. In the 20th century, there was no real way for consumers to get value except by owning a limited-rights copy (essentially derived from a regular shareholder investment scheme, where the profit is entertainment instead of monetary profit). In the 21st century, there's no longer a need for a physical object to achieve this, and since consumers never owned any of the intellectual rights to begin with, there's no longer anything left worth "owning" for the consumer.

You're paying to bring the theater home. For the price of a DVD a month, you get access to thousands of films. You get quite a bit more, but there's no free lunch. Something's gotta give, and in this case, that's persistence of ownership. Some other system has to be created for true fair use (e.g. an online service available at public libraries that allows you to export clips of films to DRM-free digital files) and personal use (e.g. iTunes-style CD burning for mixes and syncing to portable devices).

No thank you

[Hatta]

These integrated devices are never a good idea. Go all the way back to VCR/TV combos. What do you do when the VCR breaks? Throw the whole thing out and get a new one. What do you do with this thing when you cancel netflix and get service from another provider? At the very least you'll have to get a new set top box, which you should have done at first anyway. This is just one more complex and expensive component on an already expensive and complex piece of technology.

AV components should be like UNIX tools. Do one thing and do it well. My TV should display video and that's it. If I want to stream video to it, I'll get a device that can do so. XBMC, AppleTV, whatever PVR my cable company has, etc.

Re:No thank you

[MBCook]

On the surface I agree. I think we've all used those combo devices where one part of the combo was failed.

However if my TV already has all the necessary power to do the job and all it needs is a little software, I'm all for it.

Take my TiVo Series 3. It does Amazon Unbox and Netflix streaming. It already has all the hardware it needs due to it's other purpose (DVR). There is no reason not to include the feature if people want it and the device is capable of it. If it's only an extra $50 on this TV, I'd be in (if I didn't already have my S3).

Also, don't forget, that the problem with the devices you mentioned is usually hardware going bad (like the tape mechanism). In these cases where it's all CPU and RAM they shouldn't have much of a failure rate at all, and it's not effected by use (where VCRs are more likely to fail the more they are used).

Re:No thank you

[Ross D Anderson]

If the VCR breaks and you throw the whole thing out then you're an idiot. Whats stopping you from buying an extra external VCR? Similarly here, you could buy an extra set top box, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. Personally I think this is neat. This is for people like me who want stuff integrated. We'll pay the extra for doohickies with these features and you can pay less for those without.
I really don't get what you're bitching about.

The reason it's integrated into the TV

[Benanov]

The TV supports the DRM scheme used. It's going to be *that much harder* to put some box in between the TV and the servers in order to capture, rip, and copy the movie.

That's why this is important. Before, TVs were just dumb display devices. Now that most have firmware instead of just solid state circuits (hell my parents TV has a bootup sound) this sort of thing is possible.

The push to having every little device do everything is that these days devices start out obeying their creators instead of their owners. Eventually many devices end up being Freed or at least placed more under consumer control, but it'll be a harder effort for consumers to hack everything all at once.

Re:The reason it's integrated into the TV

[Dadamh]

While I can see where you are coming from, in a reactionist YRO sorta way, there is something odd about complaining about inability to copy a rented film. You aren't even talking about making a legal backup of a movie you own, you are talking about outright theft (duplication not being theft aside). I don't think having some DRM on a movie that is inherently rented is exactly a bad idea. I agree that purchased hard copies (CDs, DVDs, Games) should be copyable, but whining because you can't copy a rented DVD is a bit of a stretch.

Re:Oh no, not again.

[kannibal_klown]

Yet another bad idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas.

Why not add in a DivX player too while you're at it?

Now...if the $300 bought me a built in open source DVR and the Netflix gateway was included, I'd be interested.

Explain to me why this is a bad idea.

Netflix is about RENTING movies.

They (currently) offer their OnDemand service for as a free bonus to your rental subscription. It's better than the free OnDemand services your cable provider offers.

Until recently, their OnDemand service was only available on PCs using Silverlight. Little-by-little set-top boxes are being released to allow viewing on the TV.

I actually use this service ...

[Hodar]

So many comments, so many people who have not tried this feature.

When the XBox 360 update came out, I was one of the first to download it. After the download, I saw the Netflix feature and decided to try the free 30 day offer. I opened my account on my PC, selected a host of movies to stream (Heros seasons 1-3, The Office seasons 1-4, Logans Run, Kelly's Heroes, ect.) and finished the setup with my XBox.

There is some buffering done, I don't know how much is buffered whether it's 3 seconds or 10 minutes - don't know. I do know that my cable ISP had my limit set at 4 Mbps, so almost every time I would watch 2 minutes, then be alerted that my cable speed had 'slowed' so the download was changing to support my lower cable speed. Usually, this wasn't really visually obvious (I have a 120" HD 1080p projector) - the picture quality was what one would expect on an over-the-air antenna. Not great, but certainly watchable.

I later upgraded to a 6 Mbps internet package, and the picture improvement did improve. Sometimes I'd say that it was comparable to a DVD, other times more like a good VHS tape. All in all, viewable by any person who doesn't want to whine about non-Blu-Ray quality.

On my screen, the picture was perfectly acceptable. I wouldn't keep Netflix around if it weren't for the streaming video. I get UNLIMITED streaming with the lowest package they offer (~$8/month). The movie selection on streaming is extensive enough that when there isn't anything to watch on my Dish - I keep myself perfectly content watching something from the 10,000 movie selection. The contents do change every couple of months - so there is always a variety of stuff to stream.

Is it better than owning the DVD? yes and no. No, the quality isn't always as good as a DVD. But, yes in that a great deal of what I watch are movies I wouldn't be interested in buying and storing. Some movies are watched simply because they are 'classics' and you need not own them. Like "Logan's Run", "Clockwork Orange", the original "Omega Man" - for me, watching them once every 'x' years is often enough.

From the article

[internerdj]

"Tim Alessi, director of product development for LG Electronics USA, said the broadband TVs will sell for roughly $200 to $300 more than a regular HDTV set."
So let me get this straight. I can get a Roku for $99 that I can move between TV sets, offers more than just netflix for $100-200 less than this? I guess not having another box on my entertainment center would make my wife happy, but really what is having another box, especially as small as the Roku?

Re:Linux?

[Andy Dodd]

Many news articles about Netflix moving to Silverlight were titled, with "Mac and Linux" in the article title, but at that point (and still), the Silverlight version of the Watch Instantly service supports only Windows and MacOS, not Linux. Linux support was planned but no news on that yet - in theory Monolight provides Silverlight support under Linux but I wouldn't be surprised if the DRM component were missing.

Interestingly enough the Flash-based system used by CBS and Hulu has no DRM (other than some rudimentary anti-ripping features) but the studios still seem to be OK. As a result they work in Linux... Sort of. Flash under Linux has insanely high system requirements for video playback. My old desktop (which is now my HTPC) can't playback directly via the site (incredibly choppy), but if I rip the video on another machine (as I said, rudimentary anti-rip), it plays back happily in mplayer on the aforementioned Athlon XP 2800 machine.

Ripping is a pain in the butt, I wish I could just playback directly on that machine. Hulu's commercials are minimally intrusive.

Meh.

[argStyopa]

I just got a Roku for Xmas, and I'm quite pleased with it.

Frankly, I prefer my hardware modular. I understand the appeal of having "all in one" boxes, but if I have a DVD player, and a monitor, I'd rather they be SEPARATE (at least insofar as the separation doesn't impair quality) so I can upgrade/replace parts as needed.

And FWIW: "...Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles..." of which about 11,900 are truly SUCKY MOVIES.

Most of the good ones are STARZ-licensed, meaning they are only available for as long as they are up on the STARZ network, meaning a handful of months at most.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Netflix, and I really like Roku (lots of good TV stuff there), but don't for a minute think 12,000 movies means anything close to 12,000 GOOD movies you want to watch.

Dumb Devices

[Ohio Calvinist]

TVs have always been one of the most reliable appliances in ones homes specifically because they don't have updatable components and had "better be right" out the door. Firmware upgrading has allowed companies selling hardware to control what users do with their devices, prohibit legal modification, introduce poorly developed products with a promise that 1.1 will be better, and introduce planned obselescence when 2.0 requires hardware rev. 2.0. HDTV has already had a hard enough time gaining widespread adoption in the US; the single most TV obsessed nation with a high per-capita income in the world. One of the few things that inspire consumer confidence is that TVs are built-to-last and they are a zero-maintainence piece of equipment. Even a stove requires more maintainence.

Most folks I know have the ugly wooden console set that is almost 25 years old, and won't replace it until it breaks or bit the bullet on a 27"-32" when their console died. They aren't going to go out and drop $2,000 for a set that has feature X,Y,Z to have features suddenly drop because Sony or Universal decide to take their ball and go home; or have it bricked by a hack programmer trying to patch a DRM flaw before his boss fires him because Big Content is going to walk if they don't fix it.

They should work with cable/sat providers to include the software in their boxes because most folks have digital cable or satellite and need some kind of reciever box anyway, and other than the TiVo loyal; the market has proven folks would much rather rent than buy these boxes, and if bricked they can take it back to their Cable Co for a new one and let them worry about getting it fixed. I would think this would only drive acceptance of PPV purchases for those not on NetFix yet if people can be swayed from the physical media and/or physical video store habit of entertainment. This way no TVs are harmed or depreciated while those displays still work, and I can let the provider worry about getting the content to my screen... whatever that form takes or changes in the 10-20 I've got this display.