Uproar Over Netflix's New Instant Viewer 575
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."
Re:Uninstall Reinstall? (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like a flag is set for the account when you "upgrade."
netflix silverlight (Score:1, Informative)
kdawson (Score:5, Informative)
=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.
OS X Support (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:5, Informative)
The original player has DRM as well. It uses MS's COPP protection.
Re:kdawson (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Let them fry! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:so just quit (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Let them fry! (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone remember being able to have multiple queues on your (shared) account with someone?
I thought they backtracked on this and changed their minds.
It's the encoder, stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
MOD THIS UP!!! KDAWSON SHOULD BE FIRED (Score:2, Informative)
kdawson is the worst "editor" I've ever seen. He wouldn't be hired to write for a high school newspaper. This is what slashdot has come to though, circling down the drain.
Re:so just quit (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot is useless, even +2 posters have no clue what they are talking about. See here: http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-away.html
Re:Uninstall Reinstall? (Score:5, Informative)
except that new accounts get no choice.
I recently signed up and never new about anything other than the silverlight player.
Re:kdawson (Score:5, Informative)
kdawson does nothing positive for slashdot. He should be removed. His entries sound like the worst kind of hellraising politics.
Please, please mod this up. kdawson always, always posts absolute garbage. I didn't even look at Slashdot for months due to all the total garbage posted by kdawson. Now I have come back, and I have no idea why.
I understand users posting dumb comments, and I can even understand dumb comments getting modded up...but dumb summaries of total crap articles? I might as well read Digg for that. Maybe I'll start ignoring Slashdot for a few months again, or until they get rid of this absolute garbage that kdawson always posts.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't work in Moonlight.
Re:they did tell you ahead of time (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't just 'not in the fine print,' as I recall. When I switched to the Silverlight viewer (to be able to use Netflix instant streaming on the Mac), I seem to vaguely remember the warning being in large, bold print about two point-sizes larger than the rest of the page.
How quickly we forget (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, this beta was announced in October 2008, and Mac users rejoiced because finally there was a Mac-compatible way to watch Netflix streaming.
That link cited in the article is actually a blog post that made Mac users like myself jubilant last year. I have not had a problem since, and there are no other links in the article for me to get a better impression. My guess is that Netflix is pushing people to the Silverlight player, which is all Mac users had in the first place. Is that what's happening?
There is no problem on the Mac side, as far as I can see. It requires an Intel Mac, but the previous netflix worked on no Macs at all.
Some of us PREFER the new player (Score:3, Informative)
The old player used Windows Media DRM, which of course was Windows only. As a Mac user, I prefer the new player since I now benefit from it.
But, more importantly, the changes Netflix has made now allow streaming to quite a few devices - my Tivo HD, for instance. In my opinion this is far, far more welcome than streaming to either a Windows or a Mac computer.
As an aside - kdawson needs to get caught up on his reading. Dredging up a story from last October, back when the reported service change had just started, doesn't really qualify as "stuff that matters". There definitely were a lot of issues with the changeover, back then; but most have been resolved.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blu-Ray Player Streaming (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:3, Informative)
The real reason for this change is that there are tools that rip the old Windows Media stream and let you save the instant movies on your computer. So far I haven't seen a similar tool for the Silverlight streams.
I suspect they were not really worried about that. If you want to rip a movie you rip the DVD. Ripping a netflix stream would just produce a bad resolution movie, no dolby 5.1, and glitches.
The real reason I think is, ironicaly customer service and a path forward on DRM.
with silver light they can service both mac and pc and eventually linux users with one application instead of 3.
Microsoft is pouring money into silver light, and one assumes they are responsive to the needs of earlier adopters. Netflix could probably get more of the changes they need from microsoft silverlight than an entrenched microsoft product. likewise for flash. Better to be the big fish in the small pond than a small fish in a big pond if you are seeking impact.
I've used both the services for a mac, as well as a PC (running in virtualbox) the original PC version, early mac beta and the silver light versions on PC and mac.
The silver light version normalize the experience on the mac and pc. unfortunately it's equally sucky now.
with the old version there were a bunch of hidden diagnostics you could pull up. You could even overide the automatic data rate selection, which was helpful if you wanted to force downgrade it when your connection was having intermittencies.
with the diagnostics you could determine which times it sucked because Netflix was not delivering and which times it sucked because comcast was sending it on a DNS wild goosechase through slow pipes.
with the new one you never know who to blame when it sucks. Which is to me more frustrating even if then net outcome-- gaps in my movie and bad resolution-- is the same.
Re:Uninstall Reinstall? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:I see comments in the thread linked to... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:so just quit (Score:1, Informative)
New enrolls sure do. You are either mistaken or your account is busted. Contact support.
I just signed up for a new account to go with my roku and I have the option for multiple queues.
Re:so just quit (Score:5, Informative)
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 [netflix.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bigger disaster for Microsoft? (Score:3, Informative)
1. Fullscreen artifacts
2. Stuttering (AFAICT it's not streaming problems)
3. More pixellation in higher quality modes than the old player.
So no, it's not just FUD.
I coulda told ya that! (Score:1, Informative)
I saw that "A Clockwork Orange" was available for streaming, and figured that it would be fast and convenient.
Upon installing Silverlight, I got a nice full screen movie. The quality seemed to be about the same as Youtube; maybe with a bit higher quality video feed, but still Youtube-ish. Granted, this was an older movie...but it wasn't impressive enough to warrant a new program.
Unfortunately, not more than 10 minutes in, I discovered that the sound quality was equivalent to a poor youtube to ipod conversion. The sound started lagging behind; at first it was barely noticeable. But by the last 30 minutes of the movie, entire sentences were being uttered long after the character was off screen. Anger? Portrayed in silence, then sounded out in calm. The mood was completely ruined.
In short, this is a terrible service. I ended up playing a game while occasionally flipping over to the movie, then had it shipped to me anyway. Maybe it would be a good way to preview the movie to see if it's worth having shipped, but it's certainly not worth watching the whole movie with it.
I personally like the new player (Score:2, Informative)
The new player has marked improved video quality for me. Other improvements included are automatic resume from last playback, de-coupling from windows media player and, greater viability for cross-platform usability. It works on Mac OS X with Silverlight for Mac. I hear tell that there are plans to support Moonlight.
However, I don't think Linux folks have yet LOST anything they already have. So the best you can hope for is that they eventually do support Moonlight.
Not a problem for me.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Not offtopic you ignoramuses (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Silverlight is rubbish (Score:3, Informative)
has been a bit shit compared to the alternatives (including Java)
The fact that you consider Java to be an alternative to Silverlight strongly implies that you do not even know what you're talking about.
And if you actually meant "JavaFX", then the same is true, only slightly less so. JavaFX is stillborn for many reasons, and the only competitor Silverlight has today is Flash/Flex.
Handy Secret Commands! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:so just quit (Score:3, Informative)
So yeah, the troll is right on a technicality.
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:1, Informative)
You don't know of any tools that let you use Silverlight under Linux? Let me introduce you to my little friend: http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight [mono-project.com]
h.264 benefits from colour depth (Score:1, Informative)
MPEG dropped a lot of colour information. However, that means darker shares look blocky because they are all closely the same colour and only when the difference becomes big enough will it encode a different shade.
And so you see the colour blocks.
h.264 reserves more data for colour information and picks it better, reducing the appearance of large macro blocks of the same colour.
IIRC, MPEG1 is still better than either at VERY low bitrates.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:2, Informative)
The real reason I think is, ironicaly customer service and a path forward on DRM.
with silver light they can service both mac and pc and eventually linux users with one application instead of 3.
LOL. So is that one app Microsoft Windows? I fail to see how using silverlight helps those of us who run Linux or OSX. Make no mistake, its in MS's best interests to keep the linux/mac versions far behind the current ones, thus keeping it worthless forever. Or are you suggesting that there are not countless ways to stream video on all three platforms and we are just waiting for MS to provide it to us?
Re:they did tell you ahead of time (Score:3, Informative)
For what it's worth, I've had a better end user experience with the Netflix Silverlight viewer than I have with hulu.com , better A/V sync, slightly better picture, fewer server dropouts (I've had hulu die on me in the middle of viewing an episode, damn annoying to have to switch to fox.com and watch their ads.), I can't really rate the old MS viewer because we only had a really old (800MHz) XP pc to run it on at the time, so naturally it was unusable.
I disagree.... (Score:5, Informative)
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 believe netflix just lowered the stream bitrates (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:I believe netflix just lowered the stream bitra (Score:3, Informative)
I just figured it out.
use the ctrl-shift-alt M shortcut to bring up the menu. Then choose A/V Stats
You'll see the bitrate is actually 500. The buffering bitrate is 1500. WTF?
http://gamerslastwill.com/wp-content/uploads/netflix.png [gamerslastwill.com]
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Secret reason for this change! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Frog, pot, increased heat (Score:2, Informative)
"But Disney wrote the law, so how can you ignore them?"
By not buying their stuff.