Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater DVD player with built in wifi

Alan - Netflix lets you stream some material in High def - it's a little better than DVD quality, not as pristine as a blu ray. Audio (for now) is in stereo, although Netflix has recently gotten a license to stream Dolby Digital plus with some oftheir high def offerings.

The Insignia Netflix interface is better than the Samsung interface (strange, given the "budget" nature of the Insignia players). But, the Samsung also lets me stream audio and video from my home PC to the TV, wich is neat, but a little cumbersome.

The stream from both players is as good as what I get from the computer. It's definitely a mature technology, and very effective, even with wireless.

I'm not sure if Alan's question was answered.

The various BD players with WiFi and Netflix, must be physically connected to the TV, but connect to the local network wirelessly so they can stream the video from the Internet. It's not wireless from the player to the TV (yet).

Of course, if you just want streaming movies straight to your TV without a hard wired Bluray player or other device you can just buy one of the TV's with built in WiFi and netflix streaming.

I use streaming to have a giant selection of movies and TV shows but I still go back to bluray for the best PQ and SQ.

Hi terzaghi (David) and Jakewash,

Thanks for the info. I find Wii amusing (I play it when I visit Axiom. . .) but not enough to own it. Likewise PS3. I'm just curious to see how Netflix streaming in SD compares to SD DVD playback. I wonder if it's free of glitches--of course this may depend on how busy the bandwidth pipe is from my cable company.

Regards,
Alan

Netflix SD looks like SD cable. Netflix HD looks like HD cable. So the SD is not as good as DVD, and the HD is not as good as BD.

I have a 25 Mbps connection to my house, and everything is glitch-free, but I'm not typical. I don't know if Netflix has ever said exactly how much bandwidth is required for HD streaming with 5.1 audio, but the rough number they give is 5+ Mbps. I've seen other people state the required range is 7-10 Mbps.

I Typically have DL speeds ranging from 8-12 mb/s, sometimes less and sometimes more. I have no problems streaming HD (Which looks like HD cable as neon mentioned). I have not tried anything with surround sound yet as netflix just made this available on select titles and I have been too busy lately for movies.

I think that the Wii-streamed Netflix looks very good. Not quite as good as the HD through the Samsung, but much better than anything I stream over the internet directly. Perhaps the scaler in my TV is really the bees knees.

Great! Thanks, Neon (Chris), Capn, Tom Tuttle and all for the excellent detail and advice.

That's OK if I have to connect a BD player directly to the TV (an aging Samsung DLP that's still cooking on the original bulb).

Now I have to figure out the wireless routers. There seem to be several types at increasing price, the basic one (150 mbps), and then a "Wireless N Gigabit" router with 300 mbps (IEEE 802.11n) transfer.

Thanks,
Alan

If the cost of the N with a gigabit interface isn't prohibitive, that's the way I'd go (make sure it has 3 antenna, or you're not getting real N). If it is dual band 2.4/5.2 GHz, even better That type plays well with older G gear (when set to 2.4), and if you're running all 5.2 GHz N equipment, you can move to those relatively interference-free bands (of course once everyone is doing that, the same problem that 2.4 has now will show up again).

After having the LG for a couple of days I can say I am very pleased so far. Regular dvds look amazing. The Netfix streaming has worked great, no glitches. I really like that it has Pandora radio. It's nice to listen to your favorites with out any commercials.