Netflix “Watch Instantly” Experience

Introduction

During the course of the weekend I started making use of the Netflix “Watch Instantly” feature which means that I am able to watch video content streamed via the internet.

Technical Requirements

Unfortunately, the tech specs are limited:

• Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
• Internet Explorer version 6 or higher.
• Windows Media Player version 11.

Since I am a Mac OS user, I ended up using VMFusion to load my Windows XP VM. Had no issues.

Questions & Answers

In case you are a current Netflix member and wondering how the “Watch Instantly” feature works, here are some official answers from Netflix:

• What are the limits?: “Netflix membership plans that come with unlimited DVDs per month come with unlimited instant watching, regardless of the number of discs you may have at home at any given time. Plans with a cap on monthly total discs come with a specific number of instant watching hours per month. Click here to view the full details for your plan.”
• How does is this feature related to my queue?: “Watching instantly and your DVD Queue are unrelated. Even if you have the same title in your DVD Queue, watching that title instantly won’t delete it automatically.”
• How does my internet speed affect the video?: “The speed of your Internet connection can change frequently based on network conditions in your residence and your Internet Service Provider’s system. The faster your internet connection, the better your video quality. Still, we automatically adjust Instant Viewing video quality to give you the best possible image for your connection speed.The faster your internet connection, the better your video quality. Still, we automatically adjust Instant Viewing video quality to give you the best possible image for your connection speed.”

Experience

Not all video in my queue is available for playback but I was happy to see that Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was available (notice the play button next to each disk):

(click to view)

Clicking the play button will launch the player. Depending on whether you have the necesary software installed, you might have to proceed through some software upgrades before viewing the video. If all is good, then you’ll start seeing the Netflix load screen:

(click to view)

Once the movie loads, you can then switch from player to full screen mode. The video stream tries to keep streaming ahead so that you have a sufficient buffer. However, sometimes the movie will pause and you will get something like this:

(click to view)

In my situation, I was the only one using a dedicated network (jacked in directly to the router). I’m sure there are a bunch of performance tweaks that could be made for the hard core user of this service.

Verdict

At times I noticed some choppiness when the camera would pan across the screen. I also switched to a wireless connection and noticed that the video was still good but the load times were longer. At one point, I noticed my connection being so bad that the video was being corrected to stream at a much lower resolution where the video became quite pixelated.

The video quality is much better than Joost but openHulu might prove to be a strong competitor. However, being a home theatre nut, I’ll most like use this to service to sample video before adding to the queue for watching properly on my home theatre system. Even if I hook the laptop up to my home theatre system, I’m getting video and audio quality that still pails in comparison to DVD and even Blu-Ray.

My search for digital video on par or better than Blu-Ray quality still continues.

Tags: Netflix