Slashdot Mirror
Uproar Over Netflix's New Instant Viewer
almechist writes "Many Netflix customers are up in arms over the new instant-watch player powered by Microsoft's Silverlight. The official Netflix blog is full of complaints from users who decry not only the new player's quality but also the way it's being distributed, with many claiming they were deceived into downloading it. Once you opt for the new player, the old Windows Media based player won't function, not on any computer associated with the account. The new player is supposedly still beta, but NF members are strongly encouraged (some say tricked) by NF into the so-called 'upgrade,' which is permanent — there is no way to opt out. The marked decrease in video quality seen by those who have switched is perhaps not surprising, since the old player could utilize bit streams up to twice as fast as the new one, but this information is nowhere given out by NF. So far NF has been answering all complaints with variations on 'tough luck pal, you're stuck with it,' but many customers are so disgusted they're ready to cancel their NF membership. This could be a public relations disaster in the making for Netflix."
It looks like a flag is set for the account when you "upgrade."
=FUD. I have never seen an article penned by him (or her) that does not over-exaggerate the facts of the matter. The silverlight player has been out for a few months now. To have 480-odd complaints in that time, considering the size of Netflix's user base, while not great, is not that significant.
The implementation of silverlight is still an important problem because of the DRM and the possible incompatibilities and bugs, but it is nowhere a "disaster".
kdawson does nothing positive for slashdot. He should be removed. His entries sound like the worst kind of hellraising politics.
Personally, I am very happy with the new Silverlight-based movie player. The Windows Media Player-based solution offered no OS X support and I was forced to use VirtualBox to watch NF movies.
Also, in my experience the new player loads much faster and fast forwarding and rewinding works much better. I have not noticed a decrease in quality, probably because my Internet connection wasn't fast enough in the first place to get the highest-quality streams.
TerraIM - my pet AIM client project.
The original player has DRM as well. It uses MS's COPP protection.
Anyone remember being able to have multiple queues on your (shared) account with someone? Thrown out, in the name of "efficiency" to much booing.
They reverted that decision after the public outcry. We still have multiple queues on our account.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Netflix has responded to complaints in the past. At one point they were going to ditch multiple profiles/queues per account, but they decided to keep them after the uproar.
There are pretty much three choices for streaming video right now:
1. Crappy encoder, low bitrate. This is what Youtube went with originally--they used FLV1 (Sorenson H.263) video, which at the time was the only real option (other than VP6, which wasn't much better). They went with 350kbps video. The result was pretty awful, but it worked for Youtube videos. It's free, so people will tolerate it. But for a paid service, such quality is absurd.
2. Crappy encoder, high bitrate. This is what Stage6 did; they used DivX, which, while better than FLV1, wasn't too much better. But what they did was allow absurdly high bitrates; I saw bitrates over 12 megabits per second for standard definition video! Of course, we all know what happened to Stage6; upon realizing the sheer amount of money that such bitrates cost, they went out of business, sort of like Wile. E. Coyote falling to the ground only after realizing that he was standing on air.
3. Good encoder, low bitrate. Facebook does ~600kbps standard definition video, and it looks great. Vudu does 1080p video on demand at 2.8mbps. Youtube now does 720p HD at 2 megabits. What do they have in common? They use x264 for encoding.
NetFlix chose to use VC-1 instead, and as a result they have 1.5 megabit standard definition streams that look like crap. And they don't even have an excuse anymore, because Silverlight supports H.264. Which is rather odd, actually, as Microsoft has been pushing for years to try to replace H.264 in the marketplace with their vastly inferior VC-1. Maybe they've given up because their campaign just isn't working.
except that new accounts get no choice.
I recently signed up and never new about anything other than the silverlight player.
I don't read AC A human right
It doesn't work in Moonlight.
Nevermind, it seems that the lovable DRM within the raw video file ties the video to the player. Oh well, on to other solutions...
Same here. Signed up last week. I've been using the silverlight player and I've been really enjoying the Netflix service on my laptop and on my XBox. Video quality looks pretty good to me. I don't really understand the complaint.
but speaking of youtube, i find that many many videos are "no longer available". It's become way way less useful. Also, if the videos are no longer available, why don't they remove the links so you don't try to watch the video?!? epic fail.
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I just signed up two months ago and my wife and I each have their own queue. Sign in and go to this page and add a profile.
https://www.netflix.com/ViewProfiles
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Seriously I think it works excellently. And to complain about DRM on a RENTAL is insane especially when the original had DRM too. Sorry Im sure Netflix will take being able to offer films to Mac users and soon linux users with moonlight, over a few people bitching any day.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I use Netflix, both the delivery by mail system, and the Instant View.
I "upgraded" to Silverlight when the service required me to do so.
The video quality is better. It is not interrupted nearly as often by network congestion as the old player was, and the "backwards/Forward" slider actually works without rebuffering the entire movie again. It also remembers where I left off when I close the IE. I can come back a week later and pick up right where I left off. The "free" service works better, by far.
But what about Windows Media player being borked? Until I read the summary, IT DIDN'T MATTER. Why?
Quite simple. I don't use Windows Media Player for ANYTHING BUT NETFLIX! Matter of fact, I don't use Internet Explorer for anything but Netflix as well!
As a matter of fact, Netflix is the only reason either of them are even installed on my machine. So, in essence, there was a net effect of ZERO, other then the above-mentioned benefits.
I've been very successful at getting embedded WMV to play on Linux, but, as of now, don't know of any such tools for Silverlight.
Microsoft made a really good container/codec combination with WMV, but as was the case with Vista, they just couldn't leave good enough alone.
Jesus fucking christ the moderators have become shockingly bad lately.. for the uninitiated, Alice is the intended recipient (ie. the netflix viewer) and Eve is the eavesdropper. If they are the same person as in this case, the protection can be cracked.
I just tried it yesterday. It seems to work fine. No fast-forward/reverse, but forward/backward selection from an image preview stack works well enough for me (for now). It does seem like the default auto-bitrate tends to set things on the low side. Try control-shift-alt-b to manually select from the three available bitrates, and control-shift-alt-m for a menu of other interesting stuff.
Which doesn't work with my monitor, since I have an older flat panel that isn't HDCP compliant. It makes the service completely useless to me.
DRM has nothing to do with this. I am not a proponent of DRM, but this particular situation is not affected either positively or negatively by the existence of DRM. I don't mean from the point of view of the customer, I just mean the situation itself and how to resolve it.
The issue is that the performance and quality of the new player has been reduced dramatically to the point the service is not worth the same. It's like being sold Blu-Ray, but then one firmware update later losing the HDMI output and only being able to use S-Video or Coax.
THAT is what is causing the problem. Once you have started to use the new system, you cannot use the old one, and that has nothing to do with what computer you are using or what DRM is installed. It's a server side issue. Well, that's a simple database transaction over at Netflix. They just need to modify their damn CRM to allow customer service reps to either put people back on the old system, or issue trouble tickets to the IT staff to do it for them.
Even better yet, just get rid of the WHOLE policy on their systems that disallows connections from older clients based on whether or not they upgraded to the new system.
This whole problem can be solved in less than 24 hours over at Netflix with practically no involvement of the customer. Just issue an email with an apology and a rebate and don't make the mistake of changing the expected quality of a service unexpectedly, especially for the same price.
P.S - I suspect they can fix the problem in 1 second. The ability to distinguish between older clients and newer clients is most likely a single field in their databases. A simple SQL statement could probably fix it faster than anything else.
Coincidentally, I just dropped the Cox Cable DVR (SciAtl 8300HD) in favor of TiVo HD and...NetFlix!
I don't "see" the issues reported, at all. What I do see is that most users...Windows or not...don't have an optimal network setup, and THAT will impact any player, SilverLight included.
We've gone crazy on the "Instant" stuff, both with the Video On Demand feature of TiVo and the "Instant To Your PC" on the NetFlix site.
So far, only ONE movie has had issues and those traced back to my DSL router and ISP. Here's a good example of network "gotcha", by the way. My TiVO Desktop machine is a new build and the MTU was defaulted to 1500. That's cool UNLESS you're on a DSL link using PPPoE that supports 1492 as a max MTU. A video stream running in that setup is in packet fragmentation hell. Setting a correct MTU made NetFlix fly. End of problem.
Plus, I would NOT trade the MUCH better experience with TiVO/NetFlix compared to Cox. If nothing else, the equipment is better. The video scaler in the TiVO box is markedly better than the cheap chips in the SciAtl 8300HD. With component or HDMI, the TiVo provides a cleaner picture. HD is great, but the real test are OTA and basic cable analog signals; TiVO kicks ass. MUCH less noise and not as soft as the SciAtl box.
Oh, and another thing...MCards do exist and do work. I had Cox tell me they would be bringing 2 SCards for my TiVo HD. I insisted they bring ONE MCard, which they said "Tech Support has never heard of". The tech showed up with both, the MCard worked fine...after a 2nd poke from the Cox network...and it's great. I went back to the local Cox store and told the 2 CSRs there I had indeed received and installed the "non-existent" MCard.
In short, SilverLight works fine; most consumers...and their networks...do not.
I am my own gestalt.
I just tried watching a movie and the quality is much lower than it should be. Something is definitely not right about it.
I saw the menu. The bitrates avaialble to me were 500,1000, and 1500. 1500 was selected, but the quality was still much lower than I expected. loads of blockies. too many for 1500bps.
Netflix just changed something I'm sure of it. I will be contacting them for certain about it.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Which supports Silverlight 1.0 or 1.1 - Basically all sites (including Netflix) use 2.0 now. Also, I don't believe Moonlight supports DRM yet.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Actually I've been using Netflix for over a year and they haven't tried to throttle me. I get 3 to 4 movies each week.
Some people never learn...no matter how many times something happens to them.
There are a few "hdmi repeaters" on the market which do a decent job of stripping hdcp, however they do not advertise this feature widely for fear of having their hdcp keys revoked. The repeater functionality defined by the hdcp standard requires that repeaters decrypt and then encrypt the output stream. Some devices just skip the whole re-encryption part of the spec though. Poke around on AVS forums or similar hometheater websites for reviews which may indicate if a particular device is usable for this purpose.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
You are missing the point. With a business model like Netflix's where you do NOT actually own the content, you are only renting it from Netflix, it makes PERFECT sense to have a DRM scheme (so long as it doesn't actually hinder people from viewing what they actually are paying to rent). Just like you should not be allowed to burn copies of movies you rent from blockbuster/hollywood video you shouldn't be able to record or copy the movies you rent from netflix.
It is when they do silly things like put DRM on video games you OWN, or music you OWN, and so forth that DRM becomes unacceptable.
Oh, and given each country has separate laws people need to stop bitching how Hulu doesn't work outside the US. There is no global copyright system. Stuff gets registered multiple times in different countries and the folks at Hulu don't want to pay several hundred times for you to be able to watch Robot Holocaust once.