Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler So long to our last Video Store

Arghhh - no more Blu Ray rentals as our last video store is closing.

I finally have been dragged reluctantly into the streaming universe by signing up for Netflix - first month free. Of course this required diving in behind my system to reconnect cables to enable proper surround sound to make its way through to the speakers. What a PITA.

Our first movie showed in 720 instead of 1080 - disappointing. Furthermore, there was one significant stoppage due to buffering or net problems I guess.

I also tried Shaw 'Video on Demand' for another movie that curiously was not available on Netflix. This time it was in 1080 but had significant lip sync issues throughout.

So, IMO, I've regressed in overall quality as I suspected that I would. Convenience over quality strikes again...

TAM

Sadly majority of the people would rather the convenience, or just order the physical copies nowadays.

I've found the Netflix has to state the higher res. content or it's all just low res. file same with Amazon Prime. Both services are very limited on content in my opinion.

Have bypassed such hassle using my Xbox1 as streamer by running my Xbox at 1080p.
If you run Netflix from your blueray to T.V. or a similar means. Set the streaming device to output 1080 4K etc.
Don't think a smart T.V. will upconvert alone though.

The V.O.D. should have selector in the menu screen for resolution. of selected film. I have a Shaw HD box as well. have you checked cable box's settings?

Netflix sends a steam based on what it detects as the maximum resolution it can send without video issues. you might have set it to the highest res, and netflix might say it's capabile of doing a higher res, but if your internet connection says otherwise, your doing to get far less.

Depending on your device, there might be a setup option that will actually test the network speed that Netflix is detecting, and that will give you far more insight to what is going on. On my Pioneer TV I can get it to let me know what the network streaming rate is. On most videos, it will start off lower and afer 20-30 seconds swap out to a higher res streem. The issues can be nothing to do with your insternet connection from your house to the ISP head-end, but outside the boarders of your ISP's network.

Tam you will probably have to check what your internet package offers for bandwidth, you may have to upgrade to a better download speed. Netflix never has any new movies but they do have some good made for netflix tv shows. If you want new releases it will be VOD or Itunes. We still have one video store here in town and they added a soft icecream outlet to increase revenue. I pay 200 a month for 400gigs so i dont stream much as it uses lots of bandwidth.The downside of a video store is they never have what you want when you want it and streaming does. Sorry to hear about your video store , real bummer.

I checked my speed on the Netflix website & it averages 15 M/sec. Netflix states that 5 M/sec is required for HD so I seem to be OK there.

Watched another movie last night. It dropped 4 or 5 times in 2 hours. I was getting 1080 this time; however, the sound was very sub par - pathetic actually. Gunshots & explosions that were dynamic on a Blu Ray were muffled & unimpressive considering how much audio gear that I have. Interestingly, I watched a bit of 'History of the Eagles' & the concert sound was very impressive indeed.

I searched the net & it seems that dropouts are very common with many customers. With the ever increasing number of customers, the net just can't keep up with demand especially during heavy usage times like in the evening.

Since I'm using a Sony Blu Ray for streaming with the router nearby, next time perhaps I'll try turning off our cable box, 2 computers & cell phone so that the stream isn't being shared.

So far I'm not impressed, although I kinda expected this...

TAM

Hi,

Same in my area Blu-ray rental places are gone. I was wondering if you are running your Netflix on Wi-Fi or ethernet connection. Wi-Fi is not reliable. I run everything that I can on ethernet, using Wi-Fi only when I don't have the choice.

jc

I'm on Wi-Fi due to the fact that my wireless router (a fairly new one) is close but in the next room. There is really no way to discretely run the cable from one room to the other as I'm on a slab...

TAM

I run straight Ethernet here, wireless is just not robust enough imho . Never have streaming issues on netlix or amazon prime on max setting though its a huge hit to my download quota. Luckily i have drop ceilings in the basement but still have some exposed wires due to laziness . In my old house i ran the Cat6 outside along the edge of the siding and never and issue in 7 yrs and -35 weather. Have a pro come in and see what they say, you can often hide the cable behind baseboards, i used some molding that i cut slots into to hide the wires for my ceiling speakers and it worked slick.Often if you pull the baseboard there is a gap under the drywall you can stick wires into, lots of lite duty cable that is fairly easy to hide. Also consider running it inside your duct work, just need special rated wire to do that though a fire from ethernet is highly unlikely.

Thanks for the advice. With 3 doorways in my path it would be a nightmare to do this; however, I'm thinking on it...

TAM

Yeah, doorways are a real PITA for sure but if you take off the trim i know there is plenty of gap between the frame and the studs around the door and Cat6 is cheap. I bought a pair of eternet pliers,some cable ends and a cheap tester for under 20 bux and i make my own cables so i can snake them where ever i want and then terminate them myself. I have to take off my glass's and its a bit fiddly with my sore old hands but it can be done

When I moved, the first thing i did was run cat6 everywhere. figured it was best to get the holes in the walls and patched before the decorator came in and started painting the walls and making the place look liveable. Getting it run after the fact is a bit more tricky if you want to keep the WAF.

I went the other route - buying physical media and finally replacing the old "Walmart special" Sony BluRay player.

Internet service out here in the sticks is OK considering I'm on a cellular modem (living on the north face of the Oak Ridges moraine means I would need a >700 foot run of cable or equivalent to be able to see a satellite without cutting down a Tunguska-sized swath of trees) but nowhere near good enough for me to feel good about it for movies.

I guess it's time to move to Oregon (that's where the last Blockbuster outlet is).

Bridgman. you just need to get on the Bell board of directors so you can get a fibre line run to your house courtesy of every other Canadian via their bell phone tax surcharges. But I don't know if they will let you watch netflix then?? might be a conflict of interest.

Well I had a much better experience with streaming last night.

I checked the Wi-Fi signal at my Wi-Fi Sony Blu Ray Player with my Samsung Galaxy Tablet - it was 'Very Strong' - so that is not a problem.

I selected Disney's 'Beauty & the Beast' - normally not my type of movie but it has brilliant colours, razor sharp rendering, beautiful sets & top notch CGI. The 1080 feed was excellent as was the surround sound track.

The movie played entirely with no hiccups of any kind. So, I can only assume that sharing 6 devices with the router while trying to stream is not a great idea. Time will tell I guess.

So I'm mildly optimistic that this might be a viable solution...

TAM

Beauty and the Beast was surprisingly better than I expected, along with Jungle Book another decent remake was Pete's Dragon.
Luckily they didn't thrash the story like they seem to do with most Prequel's.

Through my Xbox I can also set all sound to Atmos. Highly recommend if your Sony can do the same.

If you can most routers recommend to hard wire all you can to improve the wireless signal to many devices will weaken it.


Here on the mainland we're down to less than a handful of shops that even carry Bluerays. Basically down to the mainstream offerings of London drugs or Wall mart. to which wallmart is planning to stop carrying physical media later this year. {Read that on Edge homepage earlier this week}.

Hopefully that will get you by tam. FWIW any of the computer generated movies have very low bandwidth requirements compared to a regular movie. You could try powerline adapters or a wifi hotspot. I used to run my server wireless on 5ghz rather the standard 2.4 which is often very polluted by all kinds of devices ,even your neighbors.

We ran 'Total Recall' (the remake) last night. Good quality throughout.

Again no glitches with all devices off except the wife's cell phone & her PVR that was recording a program.

Feeling better now...

TAM

Have you been here??

https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/17/netflix-fast-com-upload-speed-latency/

Yup - it says that I have 15 - 16 Mps - more than adequate for HD that requires 5 Mps.

4K HDR/DV requires 25 Mps...

TAM

After over a month of Netflix, it seems to be working very well - much better than my first foray into streaming.

I still prefer Blu Rays but alas there are no more here...

TAM

I think its all just a ploy to extract even more of my hard earned money to buy their crappy movies so they have more for themselves then spew their hateful liberal BS. Blurays forever i say , perhaps we need to start a bd sharing site.

I miss the Rogers Video and Blockbuster that were in my 'hood.

It makes getting a high-speed internet connection with a good quality VPN with no logging look that much more appealing. One of those Nvidea Shield android boxes do play those pirated movies pretty good, so I am told.

Well, I made a major error with Netflix this weekend. I foolishly changed my login password & have been unable to log in ever since. Lots of calls to NF all to no avail.

Now I'm unable to log into NF through my Blu Ray WiFi even tho my account & password are correct.

Using my normal Dragon (Chrome) browser, I can correctly log into NF website but creates an error when trying to play a selection - evidently an obscure module is missing that was there before.

Using Internet Explorer browser, I can correctly log into NF website (uses Silverlite) & can play selections normally - on the computer - but not through my HT using the BD Player's WiFi.

I understand that the Chrome browser might replace the missing module & get it going. Unfortunately I detest the full Chrome bloatware but I might have to bite the bullet & try it.

Perhaps this is a case of legacy gear that is not working very well anymore. Anyway I'm really close to cancelling NF entirely which is unfortunate.

Any thoughts?...

TAM

Restart everything, power down if you have to.
Check every device you've ever logged in with to make sure none of them are still logged on in the background.
If you've ever given out your password make sure the other users log out to.

After about 12 hours of messing with this, I did a Factory Reset on my Sony Blu Ray & managed to get it up & running.

The only annoyance left is that I have to sign into NF every time that I want to use it - PITA! Judging by the comments on the net, this is a very common situation for a lot of users.

WiFi generally seems very flaky & problematic to me. Even my AA didn't want to stream my net radio station the past 2 mornings without screwing around with it...

TAM

When all else fails do a full reset on the router. Too lazy to tellyou my tales of woa but suffice it to say this works .

My NF streaming is now working just fine; however, I still have sign into my credentials every time for some reason.

Not a big deal as we only do movies a couple of times on the weekend - not every day.

I'm scared to screw around with this net stuff for fear of wrecking everything again...

TAM

What you just reported tells me you need a new cable modem or connectors on your cable or both.

My Motorola Cable Modem is probably a bit dated but it seems to work fine for everything else. Who knows??

TAM

One of my lady friends experienced the same thing as you. YouTube and everything else worked great on her tv but Netflix kept conking out and asking for her credentials. wireless on phone, tablet and pc were all fine. The cable guy replaced all the connectors and her modem and the Netflix problem disappeared. her wifi speed also doubled.

Thanks for the info...

TAM