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Giulia Satmary
Netflix is undoubtedly the most widely used streaming service in the US. Most of the consumers looking to purchase the Roku 2 are probably looking for just a Netflix streamer. Keeping this in mind, we have a whole section devoted to the Netflix streaming experience.
An important feature of the Netflix app is the adaptive bitrate streaming aspect. In layman's terms, the app seamlessly shifts to a lower bitrate stream if it recognizes that the bandwidth available is not enough to sustain the current playback bitrate. In a similar manner, it moves on to a higher quality stream as soon as the device is provided with more bandwidth.
I set up an interesting system to test the effectiveness of this scheme. Using an ASRock CoreHT 252B, I connected the wired Ethernet port of the Roku 2 to the PC, which was acting as a router. This port was bridged with the PC's wireless connection to enable access to the Internet for the Roku 2 XS. Wireshark was used to track the network characteristics of the Roku 2. NetBalancer Pro was also used to artificially limit the available bandwidth for the wired Ethernet port (and by extension, the Roku 2).
Our Netflix test stream was the 41 minute long documentary, National Geographic: Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West. I was connected to the Internet with a Comcast 20 Mbps plan, and in the first experiment, I made sure to give the Roku 2 unfettered access to all the available bandwidth. In the other experiments, I set the available bandwidth at 6 Mbps, 3 Mbps and 1 Mbps respectively. The graphs with the instantaneous data rates from WireShark are presented below.
Back in June, DSLReports indicated that the 1080p streams with 5.1 audio came in at 4.8 Mbps for the video and 384 kbps for the audio. Sure enough, we see that the default and 6 Mbps graphs show values around that mark. The anomalous value of the average bit rate (and by extension, amount of data downloaded) in the default graph are due to inaccuracies in the start and stop timestamps for bandwidth measurement. The intent of the graphs is to convey that adaptive bitrate streaming works, and indicate the bitrate which a consumer might end up with depending on their connection speed.
How low can one throttle the bandwidth before the app gives up? One might expect the multichannel audio to give way to a stereo version first, but, even at 384 kbps, the audio continued to remain at 5.1. Instead, the video quality took a very big hit. Somewhere around 384 kbps, the app entered a prolonged 'Loading' screen. After 5 minutes of waiting, I removed the throttling. As the last three bandwidth graphs from NetBalancer in the gallery below show, the app takes a good 3 - 4 minutes to move from the lowest quality stream to the highest quality stream once the bandwidth restrictions are lifted.
The Netflix app is not really user friendly, and I did find many discrepancies between the PC version and the Roku 2 version. For example, the 23.976 short movie presents a host of language and subtitle options on the PC as well as the Boxee Box. On the Roku 2 XS, I could get only English options for both audio and subtitles, and the playback refresh rate was not at 23.976 Hz. All in all, it is not the perfect Netflix experience, but one can't complain too much because this is the only sub-5W streamer that can do both 1080p and 5.1 channel audio from Netflix.
These days of seemingly bottomless video content have turned out to be a golden era for closed captioning as well, thanks to technological advances and the surprising demand from young audiences. That's proving to be a boon for people with hearing loss, too, as platforms invest more money to improve both the quality and quantity of subtitles.
Preply, which provides online lessons with foreign language tutors, conducted the survey to figure out why captions are so popular, and the answer largely revolved around how content is being consumed: 89% of people said they opted for subtitles because streaming can muddy dialogue, making movies and TV shows harder to hear.
Tablets and smartphones, meanwhile, have taken entertainment out of the living room and into noisier spaces. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they watch screens in public, where sound is more disruptive.
Overall, half of respondents said they watched TV with captions "most of the time." The number rose to 70% when it came to Gen Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, came in second, opting for onscreen aids 53% of the time.
Stagetext, which provides captioning services for live events in England, has documented a similar phenomenon. Four out five viewers between the ages of 18 and 25 use subtitles all or part of the time, and less than a quarter of people between 56 and 75 embrace the technology. The company's chief executive, Melanie Sharpe, chalked it up to experience in a BBC interview: For younger viewers, captions have become the norm.
Most theaters chose to hand out individual devices, but those came with their own problems, said AnnMarie Bacino, a professor at Kean University who is deaf. Batteries died during films, and keeping one eye on a movie screen and another on a device was exhausting for moviegoers.
In 2011, the National Association of the Deaf sued Netflix over the lack of closed captioning on its shows, saying the company was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Netflix countered that the ADA applied only to physical spaces. But a federal judge ruled in 2012 that it would be irrational" to conclude that places of public accommodation are limited to actual physical structures."
A decade later, Netflix appears to be embracing accessibility. The streaming giant has been "expanding its audio descriptions, subtitles and dubbing in dozens of languages," according to a May report in TechCrunch. Hulu, Amazon, eBay and other platforms have faced similar lawsuits over online accessibility.
The task has been made easier by advances in artificial intelligence and high-speed internet connections. Online video captions are now ubiquitous and rendered quickly for audiences consuming content on smartphones, tablets, computers and TVs.
On YouTube, for instance, instant, live subtitles were available only for content producers with over 1,000 subscribers. Last year, the company made captioning available on all videos, according to a video by its Creator Tech Team on the platform. Problems caused by a decoder's poor reception or a stenocaptioner's typos are happening less often, according to a Mental Floss article on the history of captioning.
It's creating "a more inclusive atmosphere," she added. People with hearing loss are not "outsiders" who need special accommodations. They are "just another part of the audience making use of the access to suit our own purposes."
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