Introduction
Finally one of the most common complaints about the Playstation 3 – the lack of support for playing Netflix movies instantly over the Internet – was fixed. Let’s take an in-depth look on this marriage.
Netflix is – if you’ve been in a coma for the past few years – an on-line movie rental store with thousands of movies available where you create your own list of movies you want to watch. Then they ship you the movies (on DVD or Blu-Ray, if you select that you have a Blu-Ray player on your account) on the same order that is found on your list. Then after watching them you send them back on a prepaid envelope. The number of discs you can have at home (or in transit) at the same time will depend on the plan you sign for.
Another option they offer is watching selected movies instantly from your computer or from any Netflix-ready device, like a box or a Blu-Ray player that is compatible with their system.
The huge success of Playstation 3 is due to the fact that it isn’t only a videogame console, but also a media player capable of playing Blu-Ray discs, DVDs, CDs, movies from computer-generated files, pictures and more, also featuring an Internet browser. But until this week it couldn’t play movies from Netflix.
If you have a Playstation 3 and want to play movies from Netflix all you will have to do is to order a DVD containing the software from Netflix at http://www.netflix.com/PS3, which will be delivered for free to you (it won’t be counted against your disc limit and you don’t need to return it). Of course you will need to have a Netflix account and also an Internet connection hooked up on your Playstation 3.
The disc must be inserted on the Playstation 3 whenever you want to watch a movie from Netflix.
After receiving the disc and inserting it on your PS3 for the first time, it will present you a device ID for your console and a URL (which is the same printed above) that you need to open to register your PS3 with Netflix. This registration must be done thru an Internet Browser, so you have to do this either from your computer or exiting the DVD and opening the PS3 integrated web browser.
After the registration is complete (it can take a few minutes for your PS3 to be recognized by Netflix) your PS3 will display a Netflix menu whenever you play the Netflix DVD. On next page we will review in details this interface.
Netflix on PS3 Interface
Netflix interface on PS3 is very clean and really easy to use; we liked it. On the very top of the screen you can select between watching your instant queue or browsing Netflix database genres for a movie. Instead of describing how it works, we decided to shoot a short video. See below.
Even though we liked the clean interface and browsing, each menu takes around 10 seconds to be displayed (see on the video), which is unreasonable for a device that is reading data thru the Internet; it should be something instant just like it is browsing Netflix website.
After selecting a movie to be played, playback starts after around 30 seconds. We don’t think this waiting time is bad as we understand that the PS3 needs to load (buffer) the movie before playing it.
Subtitles and different audio tracks are not available. Foreign movies are played already subtitled in English. Also no extras are offered.
The interface does not allow you to search movies, only browse thru a pre-selected list of 100 movies for each genre, which of course does not include all movies available from Netflix. If you want to search movies by title, actor, etc, you will need to use an Internet browser (you can exist the Netflix player and use the PS3 integrated web browser or use a computer) and add the movies you’d like to watch to your instant queue, which is a separated queue only for movies you’d like to watch thru your PS3 or any other Netflix-ready device.
Let’s now talk about quality.Video Quality
Don’t expect video quality from Netflix streaming video to be the same as DVDs or Blu-Ray discs, especially if you have a full HD (1080p) HDTV and are used to watch movies on Blu-Ray. If you pay close attention Netflix movies look pixelated and blurred. If you are a videophile you will cry, so don’t even try.
Netflix offers some movies on what they call “HD”, but “high definition” is a broad term and can mean only that the quality is better than the non-HD movies, not meaning that it will play at Blu-Disc-like quality.
We watched around 10 movies and all non-HD movies had a quality inferior than DVD movies. HD movies looked better than DVD movies, but below Blu-Ray quality. Of course all this notion of quality is taken from the point of view of experts. If you play them on a lower resolution TV or if you are not paranoid about quality as we are, movies will play just fine.
We took some pictures to show you some comparisons. Please note that we took a picture of a given part of the screen only, where you can compare quality; we didn't edit the pictures. For taking a picture of the whole screen we would need to resize the image to fit here and this editing would bias the quality.
On our first example we have a scene from “Risky Business”, a movie that uses Netflix standard quality.
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Figure 1: Risky Business on Netflix on PS3.
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Figure 2: Risky Business on DVD.
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Figure 3: Risky Business on Blu-Ray.
Below we have a scene from “Romeo Must Die”, which is offered in “HD” on Netflix.
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Figure 4: Romeo Must Die on Netflix on PS3.
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Figure 5: Romeo Must Die on DVD.
Conclusions
The support for Netflix instant movies on PS3 will certainly fill a void. But the videophile will still have to wait for the day when truly high-definition movies will be available instantly.
Strong Points
- You can watch several movies and TV shows instantly.
- You can play a movie that you are not sure you will like and abort it if you don’t like and play a different movie.
- Quality for “HD” movies is not so horrible.
- Clean and easy to use interface.
Weak Points
- Standard movie quality is subpar.
- No search option; you need to search movies from your PC or from the PS3 integrated web browser and add them on your “instant queue”.
- Browsing function takes a lot of time (for Internet standards) to display available movies.
- No subtitle option (foreign movies are played with subtitles in English already applied).
- No alternative audio tracks.
- No extras.
- Not all movies from Netflix library are available on streaming format.
Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/863
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