Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Mar on July 05, 2010, 07:40:06 PM
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A big job for me, so I came here. Direct TV's bill of $73/mo compared to Netflix's $8.99 and our already existing intardweeb connection is comparing a 9mm to a 120mm DU HVAP.
I'll be using my old HP Pavilion for this. What I need is: Info on routers etc for keeping the gaming rig and the "N&E" connected to the intardweeb at the same time; info on cables for converting feed from an 8400 GS to a big screen TV; opinions on the best news websites.
We're also going to be buying a new big screen TV so if you guys can give some opinions on what to get from Best Buy it would also be appreciated.
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The router's not a big deal. I've got a Linksys router I bought several years ago and it's still going stong. Mine is wireless. I've got two computers and a network printer wired to it in my office and a laptop connected wirelessly at the other end of the house and still have an open wired port.
Not sure how big a TV you plan on getting but you'de better make sure the 8400 GS will support the resolution. Does that card have a DVI or HDMI connector? You might be able to use VGA cable. I know you can with LCD monitors.
If you're going this route you might want to look into a TV tuner card and a set of rabbit ears so you can get your local broadcast channels. IIRC they are about $100 and Hauppauge seems to own the market. Then a you could use a big monitor instead of a TV. Beyond that there's a lot of web-sites that have tons of TV episodes available for viewing online.
I dropped my cable down to the local broadcast channels and a few others that come with them (CNN, TNT, etc.). That costs me $8.00/mo. (Comcast) plus I pay for my Internet connection ($67 total... TV and broadband). I've been watching the NASCAR race coverage on the NASCAR/TNT Race Buddy thing since the races are now on cable channels I don't get and the coverage is actually very good.
I've been thinking of going the same route but I think I'd want to build a HTPC first.
Good luck.
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I like that idea. I just don't know where to start. My TV is a good 25 ft from my comp. It does have dvi connections but running a cable that far seems ugly.
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We started with a "dead" laptop - one that my son had damaged the screen on. Our Samsung 43" TV has a VGA connector on it, and it was a lot easier to run an Ethernet cable to the entertainment center than anything else- I already had a BlueTooth wireless mouse and keyboard. I'd originally intended to switch in a computer with a DVI connector, but that never happened. Why? Because today there is a much much better way to do this ....
Don't even bother with a computer.
Samsung and Sony (perhaps others, but these I know) both make BlueRay players (the one we have cost about $149) that will play movies from your Netflix instant queue. (As well as Blockbuster, Pandora and YouTube). It looks better than it did off the computer, and is a whole lot less mess and messing about. Simply place what you want in your instant queue from a computer, then select it on the BluRay player to play it. I used a wired connection for ours, but Samsung has at least one model that also supports a wireless connection.
(One caveat - for some reason the Samsung BluRay player didn't work properly through my Netgear FVS318 router, even though the computer did. It would connect, but wasn't able to stream - or show the graphic of the "DVD case cover". No solution could be found, so I switched routers.)
Anyway, that's what I did - and it's the only way I'd do it again.
<S>
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Yeah, nevermind using the computer for Netflix, I wasn't thinking about the card having to support the resolution of a big screen TV, we'll use an xbox 360 instead. However I'm still bringing the PC out to the living room for news etc, so I could still use advice about news sites. I also don't really have a clue about routers, only ever used a modem, so advice on them will help too. Don't worry about wireless, we have no problem running cables up, down, left, and right throughout the house. I'm running a 50 ft cable to my gaming rig in my room from the modem in the living room right now. :)
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Resolution is not an issue to be concerned with as Netflix streams are highly lossy to reduce the amount of data. All a high resolution output is going to do is show the flaws/artifacts better.
I tried Netflix once, but it was painful to watch on my 55" television.
Once you get used to a non-compressed 1080p stream, going to Netflix is like going back to an NTSC broadcast. I realize some, if not most, people do not care about the actual physical quality of the content they watch (people are happy to watch movies on thier phones!), but I do care.
Plus, I hate what these services are doing to the Internet.
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Perhaps I should get a PS3 instead for BlueRay movies. TV episodes and small viewing can be streamed, but we'll get the DVDs in the mail when we want the good stuff. Still beats DTV's bill. Thanks for the feedback Skuzzy.
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Resolution is not an issue to be concerned with as Netflix streams are highly lossy to reduce the amount of data. All a high resolution output is going to do is show the flaws/artifacts better.
I tried Netflix once, but it was painful to watch on my 55" television.
Once you get used to a non-compressed 1080p stream, going to Netflix is like going back to an NTSC broadcast. I realize some, if not most, people do not care about the actual physical quality of the content they watch (people are happy to watch movies on thier phones!), but I do care.
Plus, I hate what these services are doing to the Internet.
Yep.
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Resolution is not an issue to be concerned with as Netflix streams are highly lossy to reduce the amount of data. All a high resolution output is going to do is show the flaws/artifacts better.
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Things seem to be much better these days. The Netflix "standard" quality streaming visually appears to approach that of DVD, and the HD streaming appears to be better than DVD, and looks at least as good and perhaps a bit better than Comcast HD cable channels. One thing I will mention - the same stuff streaming to the BluRay player definitely looks much better than when streaming to the Panasonic Toughbook CF-72 (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video) connected via the VGA connector.
All based on my own humble not very scientific hairy eyeball-based evaluation, of course.
<S>
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Unless you have a 24Mb/s download speed, you cannot get full HD quality. If you have an 8Mb/s download connection rate, you can get DVD like quality. Of course, that assumes you can actually get those speeds. In reality, it would be around 30Mb/s for HD, and 12Mb/s for DVD in order to make the best playback.
At one point Netflix dropped the HD digital audio tracks from the HD content in order to cut the bandwidth requirements without giving up more in the video.
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Hmm, this is all very good info. There's a chance that we can upgrade our connection speed from 1.5 to 10mbps for $10 more, so it's still looking good for Netflix. We can just wait for a BlueRay in the mail if we want a theater experience.
I'm still looking for opinions on news sites and routers though. Note we'll need to connect up to 4 devices to the intardweeb with the router.
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I did just that 2 years ago.
Netflix for the movies and some tv series...
HULU and other free-to-watch websites for almost anything else.
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I need to ammend my post. Netflix does not stream any digital audio at all (DTX, Dolby AC3...). They only stream the analog audio tracks, for DVD or HD content.
I am still trying to dig up the actual speeds that cap the streams at. At one point it was 2Mb/s for DVD and 4Mb/s for HD, but that was early on in thier implementation.
Ok, so what does it take to stream video data? An uncompressed standard definition (720x480) DVD would require 166Mb/s to maintain a 480i resolution (double that speed if you want to do a 480p feed). Using MPEG2, that rate drops to about 3.3Mb/s at the best compression ratio MPEG2 can deliver, before artifacts become too unbearable. Typically it averages to around 6 to 8 Mb/s.
Uncompressed HD content at 720p needs 885Mb/s and 1080p requires 1991Mb/s. MPEG4/H.264 gets it down to around 18Mb/s. Now try to come up with yet another lossy compression method to get those numbers down to 3 or 4Mb/s. It really is quite impossible to not see the difference in quality when they are side-by-side. This is where Netflix wins though. No one sees it next to an uncompressed feed or an MPEG4/H.264 feed of the content.
I am just commenting on what it takes to stream the images. Like I said, most people do not really care about the image quality.
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It really is quite impossible to not see the difference in quality when they are side-by-side. This is where Netflix wins though. No one sees it next to an uncompressed feed or an MPEG4/H.264 feed of the content.
I am just commenting on what it takes to stream the images. Like I said, most people do not really care about the image quality.
What's more, most of us are aren't even comparing it to DVD - mentally, we are considering it to be a competitor to the cable TV, not the DVD player - and at least in my instance cable isn't anywhere near as good as DVD - or actually even as good as Netflix "standard" IMHO.
But I think you are still correct on the numbers - As recently as May I was told 4 Mb/s when I was trying to resolve the router issue that couldn't be solved. What I'm not absolutely sure of is whether that was given to me by Netflix, or Samsung T/S. As an experiment, I think I'll log the traffic next time I stream Netflix (both something "standard" and something "HD") and see what the traffic actually is.
I'm not sure what the difference is with the BluRay player in the mix, either. Netflix "HD" content streamed through the BlueRay player looks better to me than a DVD played in the same player (although it's not anywhere near as good as a BlueRay). Perhaps if I viewed the same content side by side I'd see something I don't now. Netflix content streamed through the computer did not seem to be anywhere near as good.
<S>
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Ghastly, any clue on how it would look through a PS3?
We never had HD in the first place, and like I said, we can just get a DVD in the mail when we want it.
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Ghastly, most, if not all, BluRay players suck at playing DVD's. Marketing at work there. I plugged a DVD into a PS3 once, and I could not get the disk out fast enough due to the playback being so atroscious when compared to a decent quality DVD player.
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Ghastly, most, if not all, BluRay players suck at playing DVD's. Marketing at work there. I plugged a DVD into a PS3 once, and I could not get the disk out fast enough due to the playback being so atroscious when compared to a decent quality DVD player.
Correct. Gaming Consoles should not "double" as DVD players. Why? The carrier mechanisms are designed for games, but the companies make money off of folks for "also being a Blu-Ray/DVD player, etc".
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Oh, I understand why they suck at playing DVD's. I knew it before I plugged in a disc it would be bad, I was just taken a back by how bad it really was. Made NTSC over antennae look good. :)
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Oh, I understand why they suck at playing DVD's. I knew it before I plugged in a disc it would be bad, I was just taken a back by how bad it really was. Made NTSC over antennae look good. :)
Absolutely.
Also Mar, I was with DirecTV for 10 years and switched to AT&T U-Verse. I just wanted faster internet and got their bundle. I do NOT regret the switch.
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My Samsung BR does a beautiful job with DVDs. It does a MUCH MUCH better job at upconverting a DVD to 1080p, and they look 100 times better than playing a DVD from a normal DVD player and allowing the TV to do the "upconversion". However, I don't own an upconverting DVD player, but the DVD picture is getting pretty close (although not quite as nice) as a BR picture. I was pleasantly surprised how nice the Samsung does with the DVD upconversion. I can't imagine the image would have been 'sabotaged' in any way, shape, or form... but I wouldn't put it against other BR manufacturers to follow these types of practices.
BR disks are absolutely beautiful.. definitely better than DVD's.
With that being said, streaming Netflix through my Samsung BR player works out quite nice (6Mb internet - uverse)... I would put its SD content somewhere close to, but not quite DVD quality. When I find a HD stream I find it to be slightly better than DVD quality, but definitely not BR quality.
Seems about on par with Skuzzy's posts...
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I wonder if it isn't the Samsung BlueRay player that makes such a difference in perceived quality? Tigger's description of how he tiers the quality echo's my own sentiments exactly. BlueRay is best (by quite a bit), Netflix HD is IMHO somewhat better than COMCAST HD channels which is somewhat better than DVD, DVD is better than Netflix SD (by a decent margin), Netflix SD is still better than Comcast OnDemand HD (possibly because every time I watch an ONDemand transmission at some point it goes all squirrelly), all of which beats Comcast "standard" quality channels all hollow, with Comcast "standard" ON-demand being the very bottom of the barrel in picture quality - I'd almost rather not watch anything than watch something I want to watch on On-Demand.
I would not have necessarily tiered them this way when we were using the computer as the player - there was a tremendous difference in perceived quality of Netflix. I'm also not entirely sure that I ever saw anything that actually streamed in HD when using the computer as the player, even when it was available in HD. And our Internet service hasn't changed - I have (and have had all along) 16 Mb/s up and 2 down.
Shrug... Dunno. What I do know is that I'm very happy with what I got, and for a grand total of 16.99 per month for 3 DVD's at a time and unlimited Instant Play, Netflix is the absolute best bargain of the lot.
Mar, I can't answer on using the game console as a BlueRay player. I know the PS and PS2 suck as a DVD player, but I don't have a 360 or a PS3 - if I had one I might have tried it at some point, but I sure wouldn't have "planned" to use one.
<S>
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In my TV room, we use a PS3 for a Blu-Ray player and in the bedroom, we have a Samsung Blu-Ray player (same model TV in both rooms, Sony Bravia 32") and honestly, as visual qualities go, the Blue-Ray movies played on the PS3 look no different in quality than those played on the Samsung Blue-Ray player. We also use the PS3 and the Samsung player to stream Netflix and we've been happy with the quality of the video, though we do stream in Netflix HD.
ack-ack
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OMG. It's been a while since I used a computer to view Netflix (3 or 4 months). I just can't believe the difference as compared to the Samsung BlueRay player. On the computer (I tried both the new ATI 4870-based Win 7 gaming system, and the older but still quite serviceable NVidia 9800GTX based AMD gaming system I replaced and both were equally bad), and it's not much better than watching YouTube. The same exact movie (The great Panda Adventure) on the TV via the BlueRay player is at least DVD and I think actually better than that quality. On the computer, it's all the bad things about video over the Internet.
I can only say that played on the TV being driven off the computer at the "normal" viewing distance Netflix didn't look quite that bad (especially as it didn't fill the screen), although it wasn't stellar by any means - but 2 feet from a 24" monitor played through a computer it looks simply godawful.
Bottom line, though - you cannot judge how this is going to look when played through a NetFlix ready device by how it looks played through a computer - there is just no comparison.
Numbers. Standard (on the computer) was using 1.9 Mb/s, while HD (on the BlueRay Player) was 3.3 Mb/s (estimated margin of error of ~ +/- 5%). ** I noticed something that I thought I'd seen before, but wasn't sure - much of the content that shows as HD on the BlueRay players Instant Queue only plays in SD when played on the computer - but it's HD when played on the "Netflix Ready device".
<S>
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Sounds like they are doing 480p HD. 3.3Mb/s at any resolution higher than that would artifact like crazy. The BluRay player would do a 3:2 pullup to get it to 720p.
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Resolution is not an issue to be concerned with as Netflix streams are highly lossy to reduce the amount of data. All a high resolution output is going to do is show the flaws/artifacts better.
I tried Netflix once, but it was painful to watch on my 55" television.
Once you get used to a non-compressed 1080p stream, going to Netflix is like going back to an NTSC broadcast. I realize some, if not most, people do not care about the actual physical quality of the content they watch (people are happy to watch movies on thier phones!), but I do care.
Plus, I hate what these services are doing to the Internet.
what he said - Netflix is only good to rent Blu ray dvds to play in the ps3 - their streaming is crap unless you liked Divx :) and that is on a Road Runner lightning connection.
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Eagler, was that to a "Netflix-Ready device" - or to a computer? What I'm seeing is that the difference between them is night and day - computer is something like DIVX quality, but the BlueRay player streams somewhere near DVD (SD) or exceeds DVD quality (HD).
It seems bizarre to me that the 165$ Netflix-Ready BlueRay player could "outperform" my near top of the line gaming system on raw performance - and by a margin that's almost reminiscent of comparing Nintendo 64 to a Wii. I feel like it almost has to be deliberate.
When I switched from the laptop to the BlueRay player, I attributed the huge improvement in quality to the fact that the laptop had a mobile gpu, was connected VGA rather than DVI or HDMI, and wouldn't support the native resolution of the TV on VGA- all of which changed with the BR player.
Last night I found that even the new Win 7 system is just as poor as the laptop - albeit on it's own 24" monitor rather than the TV.
<S>
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It cannot exceed DVD quality at 3.3Mb/s, or 4Mb/s. Full DVD streams between 6 and 8Mb/s using MPEG2 compression and that is for a 480i stream.
Using MPEG4/H.264 the best you could hope for at 480p, would be a stream rate of 8 to 10 Mb/s. 480p is the lowest defined resolution for HD. Anything lower than that is DVD, or less.
Mathematically, the HD stream is approaching near DVD quality at 4Mb/s. The only gain over DVD would occur if the source started in the digital realm as virtually all DVD's were from an analog source (except for many modern animated features).