Nintendo Wii To Get Netflix Streaming 213
motang writes "Netflix and Nintendo is set to announce Netflix streaming service for the Wii soon. Subscribers who have the unlimited streaming service can watch non-HD version of the movies on their Wii with a special Netflix disc inserted." The thing I can't understand is why the PS3 and Wii have to require a disc. Both are capable of downloading applications and executing them. Why should I be required to dedicate my disc slot to stream a movie? Of course, my netflix queue is half-filled with Ken Burns documentaries, so if I lost the disc, I think that would just make the wife happier.
Dear Submitting Slashdot Reader (Score:0, Insightful)
PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010 (Score:5, Insightful)
The PS3 will go disc free later this year, but didn't supply details as to why. However, since the Wii has far less storage, this may or may not be possible on the Wii...
http://kotaku.com/5391286/netflix-on-ps3-getting-embedded-solution-late-next-year [kotaku.com]
Re:Q&A (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it -- why do we have BluRay, which has a maximum capacity of 50GB? They already have solid-state memory devices that only weigh a few grams and have that much storage capacity -- and they don't degrade, scratch, or fall apart after a few months.
They only cost $100 more per unit. Who needs cheap media anyways?
Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010 (Score:4, Insightful)
A player does not take much space, and discs can't add storage to a Wii anyway (for caching or what have you). The Wii's ridiculously small storage and lack of expandability does not affect this particular application.
Re:The disc is DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Every new multimedia technology Microsoft creates sucks until the second major revision (at least).
While I don't think that's an untrue statement in general, it applies to many technologies, both hardware and software. As for hardware, that goes for many things outside the computer industry (car models, washing machines, whatever have you) as real-world use reveals shortcomings the original design and testing didn't take into account.
Re:This May Be dumb but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because the average user is still happy with 480p?
Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee thanks. It's not like I haven't already researched the issue.
No need to be sarcastic or rude, I was just trying to help.
If you read that post, it's a bunch of nonsense gobbleygook and FUD that works out to, we don't want to do it.
I did read the post, and that is not at all what it sounds like. It sounds like they have to figure out a way to overlay a secondary stream on top of the video stream. Obviously, you seem think this is easy to accomplish, so why don't you contact them and tell them how to do it?
He says they would have to reencode the entire library with subtitles enabled in order to stream the captions. This is of course BS because the captions are not video data and do not need to be encoded.
That is the exact opposite> of what he says. He says that reencoding the entire library would be time and cost prohibitive, as well as angering a lot of non-hearing-impaired english speakers. As a result, they are working on laying a secondary stream that contains only the subtitles over the video stream. He also says that they looked around for existing tech to do this, and found nothing.
Did you even read it, or did you just skim over it because you are pissed off?
He says that they are developing special display technology that would display the text as a separate stream in silverlight. Again FUD, I have written programs that display text in silverlight. It's quite easy, as you would expect.
As I said, if you already have the answer, why not stop bitching and contact them with the solution so they can implement it faster?
The data for all of the captions for a movie is usually around 100 KB and is freely available for use on nearly every dvd.
See above comments about submitting your idea.
The bottom line is that they do not care to have their programmers waste even 10 minutes on the Deaf community
The bottom line is that unless they release something RIGHT NOW, you are going to be pissed off. Calm down, read and understand what is written, and stop with the knee-jerk reaction.
They are going to give you what you want, and likely at no additional cost to you. Either submit your grand idea to them or stop complaining.
BDJ (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason the PS3 currently uses a disc is that the entire netflix program is written in Java. Specifically a BDJ. So the PS3 treats this disc as a Blue-Ray movie and runs their Java program as any Blue-Ray player is required to do. It really doesn't use any specific PS3 only code. They are working on a version that won't require the disc and will hopefully have it out soon (this year). I would "guess" it might be possible to take the PS3 disc and put it in to some modern BlueRay player and get it to work.
In my opinion this is pretty impressive what they have done with BDJ, and it shows what it is capable of. It also shows exactly why Microsoft didn't want this as a standard.
Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed (Score:3, Insightful)
What he says, specifically, is:
1) We don't do it.
2) We can't do it the same way we do subtitles for foreign language films.
3) We're going to do it and we have chosen a subtitle format.
4) The subtitle format is not well supported by our various viewing devices/software.
5) It will be done soon anyway.
So maybe it could be done faster. So maybe they didn't even try to do it until recently. Oh, horror!
tl;dr No malice here, calm down and relax.
Already streaming NetFlix to my Wii (Score:1, Insightful)
Why is this an issue? http://www.playon.tv/
I had mine setup in fifteen minutes and was streaming Netflix to my Wii and displaying it on my 1080p HDTV. Video quality was lower than DVD, due to transcoding to FLV. I did experience some buffering issues but that I attribute to using an ancient CPU (an old Athlon) on the transcoding host and trying to pull it down through a 1.5mpbs basic DSL link.
Since I'm using it to watch old movies with the kids, my expectations on picture quality are not above the Wii capabilities.
If you care that much about picture quality, I cant say I sympathize with whining about having absolutely no other options than streaming through your Wii.
e.g. hook up your laptop (with a proper graphics display card that can send the right RGB signaling) and send the display to your TV.
Or look into PlayOn. Or some other dedicated solution to get the video quality you desire to your TV.
Re:The disc is DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Just stop the show and resume where you left off, it seems recalibrate the network speed every time you start a show.
That isn't really a solution to his problem. He wants high-quality, uninterrupted playback. Having a show suddenly stop and stutter because the bandwidth gets thin partway through playyback won't be fixed by stopping the show and hoping it selects a faster network speed. His issue is that the buffers are too small to allow playback at a high resolution on a slow connection.
Unless the buffer issue is fixed, he will run into the same problem even if he resumes playback. (and it is annoying stopping and starting playback)