showwe naython elbarah
Irmgard Rossie
I recently purchased an Xbox and I must say, considering that have yet to acquired a sports game, that I am very impressed. I got the Xbox 360 pro (with the 60gb hard drive) and this allowed me to take full advantage of the recent updates for the New Xbox Experience (NXE).
There is a metric ton of videos, demos, pictures, community games, themes and online goodness that really extend the entertainment experience of the Xbox. The interface is really intuitive and looks great in 1080p.
Netflix Instant Watch is a really significant addition and adds a really solid value, if you are in fact a Netflix subscriber. The only problem with Netflix Instant Watch is that there is a really limited movie list and it can take quite a while to find a decent movie for your Instant Queue. The HD movies streamed consistently without interruption and the picture quality was pristine.
The other problem is that you cannot add movies to Instant Queue directly from the Xbox, you have to go online via a PC, but the instant queue will update almost immediately. There was an announcement of a Netflix app for Windows Mobile so this should relieve that bottleneck (or maybe I could create a Media Center app).
The only real unresolved disappointment was the poor performance of Windows Media Center. While it only took a few minutes to connect to my home PC, once I got it up and running the controls were really slow (I mean in the order of 10-20 seconds per click). My network is running fine, it handles high def streaming with ease. So right now am I assuming there is some contention between the various apps that can share data from my Vista PC (Zune, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center).
If so my douchie friend from across the pond, you are a shill and you drive to my mothers house every 2 days a reset her unit so she can watch movies. I bought it for her because it was supposed to be simple and I relied on the WD name.
However, yesterday afternoon while I was at work my wife called and told me that the Instant Queue was no longer available. I told her to use the Wii instead and it worked fine. I performed the reset procedure I found here and got it working again.
im having this issue as well now. i wanted to know if everyone here has blu-ray added to their netflix accounts? i just added blu-ray and now im having this issue. looking forward to the firmware update. i have no other complaints except the long startup times when the wdtv starts up. its much longer than the normal wdtv live.
another thing for those of you who are havng probelms reaching the deactivate option within wdtv. make sure you start pushing the arrow sequence once the netflix window opens up and starts to load up the queue. u should see the circular progress indicator when you push the buttons. if it reaches the queue error screen you were too slow.
Thanks to the folks at Microsoft and Netflix, I've gotten the new Xbox 360 console upgrade and have started watching Netflix movies on my Xbox this morning. A couple gaming sites have been doing some reviews as well and have raised a bunch of questions, some of which I have already asked Microsoft and Netflix and will update this post if I get answers.
The new Xbox 360 console update, which will be release to the public on November 19th, includes the highly anticipated ability to stream Netflix content to the Xbox 360 console as long as you are a Microsoft Live Gold customer and a Netflix customer.
After downloading the new console update and then downloading a small Netflix update, you active the streaming functionality by entering a code from your Xbox 360 into your Netflix account via the computer. From there, you can add Netflix videos into your watch now queue and they instantly show up on your Xbox 360. Navigating through your movies is done by going to the Netlfix box in the "Video Marketplace" channel which takes you to an app that allows you to very cleanly and very quickly flip through the movies in your queue. The movies are represented by cover artwork of each movie and even when you have a hundred or so titles in the queue, the app is super fast. I would compare the experience to being almost identical to flipping through albums in iTunes using Cover Flow. The only major downside here is that movies still have be added via the computer first, before they can be played back on the Xbox 360.
Once you select a movie, you get a screen with details about the video and the ability to rate the content as well as the ability to start, resume or remove the video. When you select play, the app checks your connection speed and buffers the video. For me, the videos buffered very fast and I never waited more than about ten seconds for any video to start. That may not be the startup time for the average consumer though as I am on a 20MB FiOS connection. While most movies are in SD, Netflix has to date made about 300 videos available in HD, many of which are TV series and not actual movies. Watching the SD movies on a 50" plasma screen looked amazing and HD is really incredible. The quality of the stream is all based on your connection speed and I am waiting on Netflix to hopefully give me details on the encoding bitrates being used. But the bottom line, the video quality is really, really good and in my eyes, is DVD quality with no frame rate issues.
Netflix and Microsoft have clearly thought about the experience, the ease of use and the quality of the videos being delivered and overall, I expect users will be very happy. That being said, this hands on review leaves me with three main questions that will dictate how successful the offering will be.
For starters, what is the business relationship and model behind the new service? With three parties involved, Microsoft, Netflix and content owners, whom is paying whom to make all this happen and how will money be made? I know this is a new service to start and hence, a clear business model has not yet been established. But over time, one will have to emerge.
Second, does the availability of getting movies on the Xbox 360 now mean that more content owners and in particular, major movie studios, will start giving Netflix the rights to encode and deliver more first-run movies? Hopefully so, but they still control the content and have a big say in the success that the Netflix service will have.
Ok, don't shoot the messenger but I was asked to see if I could unblock the queue management area for Netflix but still block the streaming media part of it... We're using the URL filtering capabilities of the PA 2050 device and I have a policy defined that's based on an Active Directory user group to filter traffic. I'm not sure how I would go about doing this, any thoughs?
Its pretty basic, your going to create a rule that precedes your URL filtering rule. The rule will be from trust to untrust application will be "netflix" and action will be drop.
Has Palo Alto changed the Netflix signature recently? In September we had blocked the application per Phil's suggestion earlier in this thread and people were able to login and manage their queue but couldn't view any movies. This morning, though, I wasn't able to login anymore. Thanks --
@cshep: you would have to review all of the release notes to see what has changed between each version of the content update to see if PAN engineering have updated any particular application signature(s).
If you see the block in either the "traffic" or "threat" logs then that would be due to either an application update or an antivirus update. If you see the block in the URL filtering log then it is your URL filtering profiles that need examination.
I would say looking at the logs should give you an indication of whats going on with the block. I have a handful or preset filters for looking at that kind of thing. I'm running 3.1.4 code with the latest app and threat updates and have just noticed I'm unable to get to the netflix.com queue. I can get to the sites front page however loggin in doesn't happen. When I look at the traffic log is see a deny for netflix based on the app, i don't see anything blocked in the URL log for netflix so it's definately the app. I'd have to look back as well but I'm guessing a app and threat update changed something.
If you require assistance resolving this issue I would suggest posting some screen shots of the traffic, URL filtering and threat logs to this thread so that we can do some detective work and find the root cause of the issue.
Interface
Roku's current Netflix interface is something of a yawner. It is serviceable, but it does little more than provide you with access to your instant queue, which you needed to previously setup in a browser. Its new interface is livelier and the animations while navigating are smooth. Each title you highlight gets a pop-up summary with movie information such as star rating, MPAA rating, runtime, release year, and synopsis.
Search
This is Roku's biggest addition: You now can search Netflix's database of titles from the box and add any titles to your instant queue--or just play them instantly. It's looks basically identical to what you find on the other Roku channels, such as Amazon Video on Demand, and It has an onscreen keyboard that you manipulate with the remote.
You can only search titles, not actors or directors, but it works well. We appreciate that we no longer need to keep the laptop or iPad nearby at all times. However, it would be nice if one of the Roku iPhone remote apps available on the iTunes App Store would enable a keyboard function, so you could use the iPhone as a keyboard rather than using the Roku's remote's d-pad to type on the onscreen keyboard.
Additional instant viewing options
In addition to your instant queue and search, when you can now scroll down the onscreen interface, you will now find a wider variety of instant viewing options available. Most of the options are genre based--comedy, action/adventure, drama, sci-fi, fantasy, indie, romance, thrillers, TV, children and family, horror, documentary, and foreign--but there are also new arrivals sections for TV and movies, plus lists targeted by your recent viewing habits (for me, they were: critically acclaimed violent crime movies, suspenseful revenge movies, gritty movies, visually striking movies).