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Niklas Terki
Ever start watching a movie and then pause it because you have to leave home? You don't have to leave your Netflix movies in the middle anymore. Now you can watch the whole thing, anywhere, with the Netflix mobile app. This lets you view movies and TV shows on a smartphone or tablet. The best part? There's no extra charge, as long as you already subscribe to Netflix. The catch? You've got to have the right phone or tablet.
Android, Apple, and Windows 7 mobile-device owners can all access the Netflix mobile app. However, the application has come under fire lately for its relatively limited Android release. Only a handful of Android systems can support the Netflix streaming so far [source: Broida]. Netflix says it's working fast to bring video streaming to more mobile systems, but it's hampered by the lack of standardized streaming playback features across Android phones [source: Netflix].
The company has been releasing limited apps for years. As early as 2009, you could manage your queues from your mobile device and watch video previews [source: Pasch]. But it wasn't until 2010 that you could actually view a full-length feature or TV show on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Since then, Netflix competitor Hulu has released a similar application for its "Plus" subscribers [source: Hulu].
To download Netflix Mobile, just search for the app in the Android Marketplace, Apple iTunes Store, or Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Log in with your existing Netflix username and password, and instantly stream movies already listed in your Instant Queue. You can download the app without being a subscriber, but it won't do anything. In that case, try the company's free month-long trial to see if you like the service.
If you have a Droid, check Netflix's database of devices to see if your system is compatible. The reason for the exclusivity is that Android phones are "fragmented," which basically means phone manufacturers and carriers have customized so many types of Androids that each one needs its own app [source: Krazit]. Each app takes time to develop and Netflix is working on this. Apple and Windows users have total integration, or zero variance in their mobile systems. Total integration lets every Apple product (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) and Window 7 Phone access any apps launched for them.
Another thing to watch out for is a device limit. While Netflix lets you register up to 50 devices per account, only six can be active at one time. So the more phones and tablets you activate, the fewer computers, DVD players, and streaming boxes (like Roku) you'll be able to use at home. If you have the most comprehensive Netflix subscription (currently $51.98 per month for unlimited streaming and DVDs, eight at a time) up to four mobile devices can stream simultaneously. But lesser subscriptions allow only one or two devices to stream at a time [source: Netflix].
In fact, the only thing Netflix Mobile compromises is size: tiny buttons and a small screen you can't comfortably share during a whole movie [source: Ackerman]. All other features are the same. You'll get the same streaming selections you would find on the Netflix website. (These are limited compared to what you can get via DVDs.) You can start movies from where you left off and buffering is quick. Streaming quality is high and controlled by easy-to-understand buttons.
You will want to make sure your data plan can support the strong demands of streaming. Streaming video does eat up a lot of data, so check with your phone provider to ensure you're not stuck with fees for going over your limit. Streaming a two-hour movie from Netflix will use around 300 megabytes of data [source: Miller].
One thing you'll definitely like is the precautions Netflix has taken to ensure streaming security. This has actually caused some of the delay in releasing new Android app versions, because Netflix has had to customize security on each version [source: Boulton]. So far, it seems the biggest complaint about the app is the delay in getting it to every device.
Yes, I was gonna mention this too. Lots of the games on Steam use it, because it's smaller than mp3 at the same quality and not patent encumbered, and by modern standards no longer considered CPU intensive to decode.
Came here to say that. Speaking as a game developer, it's patent free and well supported. And if your tool setup doesn't support it already, the standard decoder is BSD licensed and it's only about an afternoon's worth of work to get it working on a game console.
AAC and Opus have pretty much obsoleted Vorbis except for highly CPU constrained systems. And if you're constrained enough, MP3 decodes faster than Vorbis (Realtime on 33Mhz ARM), and is no longer patented.
It was comparable on release. Unlike Vorbis which largely stood still, AAC has been developed a lot over the years with many new and somewhat compatibility breaking releases over time along with drastic changes to encoders as well. These days Vorbis is somewhat subpar compared to standard AAC but well and truly blown away by more modern HE-AAC implementations which itself also has multiple improvements over various iterations.
That is a given only because people don't care about audio compression for games anymore. When a typical AAA title comes in at 80GB plus, saving a few hundred MB with a more efficient codec is pointless.
I've come to find that audiophiles get really attached to formats. It's like guys from the 60s and 70s with their Ampex tape decks arguing about audio quality vs. LP albums. Vorbis and Ogg are still supported, well as of about 4 years ago they were.
Anything above 128 kbps is going to be fairly high quality to peoples ears. While Vorbis still beat .mp3 at these bit rates it's not really noticeable. Above 200kbps plus... might as well use a lossless format, of which FLAC is quite popular.
Really? Tell that to my phone. I have 10 GB of MP3's on my phone. If they were uncompressed PCM my phone would be overwhelmed. Also, I have 115 GB of MP3's on my iMac, mostly classical music. You think that's going to all fit on the SSD? Nope! 'Nuf said.
You are still keeping flac as the master file. I rememebr they days of re-encoding video for the phone (or pda), you would not say the 320*200 re-eoncode was your keeper would you? Just temporary fluff.
I take it you have a PC? With a typical mobile phone releasing with 128/256GB of storage most of which taken up by a system, if you want to carry music with you on a modern device you will likely still be using something other than FLAC.
I have a quick shortcut to transcode my FLACs to AAC for copying to my phone. Because who the **** cares about sound quality when you're on a bus (begging the question if anyone can even tell the difference off said bus).
A lot of my music is stored in ogg format. It's all legit and paid for, but I have maintained my music files for a long time and ogg works well with some of the players and there is no funny business with ripping tools spying on you like they do with MP3. Ask windows to rip music for you and it will start snooping in your files and suggesting other music based on what's there. I don't want external entities snooping my files. Anything unencrypted I keep in the cloud, I am ok with being at risk of being snoo
Well that is your first mistake in using Windows to rip and encode. Tools like ffmpeg exists on all platforms and in different formats like mp3 and aac. The problem with ogg is that it is not as universally accepted as mp3 or aac.
... with the FOSS crowd a decade or so back. If was the time when software giants all were total dickheads about proprietary audio formats and "the best format" was an academic discussing among nerds. Not using Ogg was considered massively uncool. I converted my CDs to Ogg quite a bit when "ripping" was a thing.
These days I don't really care if it's mp3 or Ogg or even FLAC. Looking into this l00ny vinyl fad that has been popping up in recent years made me aware of how unbelievably shoddy analog record technology was/is in comparison with even the cheapest of digital audio setups today.
Ogg is still at the top of audio formats for me, but with mp3 I'm more compatible with players and generic software, so I tend to use mp3 more when ripping. It's a little easier on the cpu and it's not that I can year any difference anyway.
Opus is pretty much the gold standard for lossy compression, with aac favored by apple, but not really any difference in quality, but aac is more complicated licensing wise. For whatever reason, the Bluetooth SIG ignored all of this and declared a new codec to be the standard, LC3. Most analysis concludes LC3 is worse than both aac and opus. However I guess some companies in the SIG wanted some sweet patent royalty income.
Exactly. Initially CD was limited by poor DACs. The first CD players in the 1980 used 14-bit DACs, and early 16-bit non- or low-oversampling DACs had still quite bad noise and distortion performance. Then by the second half of the 1990s when actual decent DACs became widely avaialble for consumer-grade devices, CD:s were deep into the loudness war and soon after the copy protection shenanigans. Vinyl sidestepped all of this, and was available used for little money at the time. As a student in the 90s I pick
Vorbis I'd say from a lossy codec is somewhat obsolete. The cool kids really use AAC mainly for streaming and the widest device support. If you want lossless, go FLAC especially for the best quality and for things like audio libraries.
No it doesn't, and it hasn't for a long time. If you're ending up with Vorbis files when downloading then your audio is being transcoded or you're digging back through some really long forgotten youtube archives.
Youtube uses HE-AAC, AAC (LC), or Opus depending on the quality of the stream and the device capabilities of the playing device. Bottom line, if you're being streamed a WebM stream you're getting Opus if you're getting an MPEG stream it's one of the AAC depending on bitrate or number of channels.
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