Netflix on the HD Theater

[valnar]

Has anyone compared the visual quality of Netflix/Playon via the HD200 versus something like the Roku or Samsung Blu-ray players?

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by valnar

Has anyone compared the visual quality of Netflix/Playon via the HD200 versus something like the Roku or Samsung Blu-ray players?

Playon doesn't support HD, so some of the content is going to be worse from the get-go. Regarding SD content, my general impression (from using Playon on the PS3) is that you see some degradation from transcoding to MPEG-2. I suspect that this is will trump any differences in decoding quality.

[valnar]

That's good to know. Thanks.

So I'm still torn between one of the Samsung BR players or building a small client HTPC.

[feekill]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

The XBox 360 works the same way, you can only watch what is already in your Watch Instantly queue.

-Chris

the 360 through xboxlive only gives you the 1st 9 movies in your que to select from. but if you use WMC and stream netflix to your xbox through the vmc hack then you have it all, it just isn't intergrated with sage, so it is more hardware. come on sage hook us up. But i just left WMC for sage, so eff that.

[adamwh]

Originally Posted by feekill

the 360 through xboxlive only gives you the 1st 9 movies in your que to select from.

I have 26 things in my instant queue and they all show up on the 360.

[hingepin]

Originally Posted by valnar

So I'm still torn between one of the Samsung BR players or building a small client HTPC.

My delima as well especially since Hulu now has a player. I'm wondering if the minds that have been working on SageTV and their plug-ins are slowing down current works to develop Hulu, netflix, and native blu-ray suport and to just be patient. Just hoping!

[tahoetim]

I can't understand why some here are fighting the loopback solution. I can't even imagine telling my wife and kids to reboot the hd200 into extender mode to run netflix and then boot back into server mode after a movie. Also, why go the playon route if you lose so much functionality?

I simply connected s-video from my video card to my PVR500 svideo and sound from my motherboard to the sound input on the pvr500. Then, I created a source set to channel 1 and viola! (after a few configuration tweaks like cloning the monitor outputs). Even though I had trouble setting it up, I love it now. Once I figured out that it will not run with the imovies plugin, I got it running quickly.

The netflix plugin works great and the family factor is real high. They can manage the queue, order movies, watch movies, etc right from any HD200. When a movie comes in the mail, the kids check the queue to see what movie is next in line.

[feekill]

Originally Posted by adamwh

I have 26 things in my instant queue and they all show up on the 360.

cool, i will check it out. i haven't used it since it was first launched several months ago.

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by tahoetim

I simply connected s-video from my video card to my PVR500 svideo and sound from my motherboard to the sound input on the pvr500. Then, I created a source set to channel 1 and viola! (after a few configuration tweaks like cloning the monitor outputs). Even though I had trouble setting it up, I love it now. Once I figured out that it will not run with the imovies plugin, I got it running quickly.

Unfortunately my server does not have S-Video output or a sound card, so loopback is not an option for me, and my guess is that others fall in this category as well. How is the quality? My experience with S-Video out from computers has always been poor quality, but admittedly it has been a few years since I've tried.

-Chris

[Brent]

There is also the "software" loopback channel option. This doesn't require an extra sVideo or soundcard port as far as I know.

[tahoetim]

The quality is good. I'm running IE8 and the Silverlight driver. I think the s-video input is fine.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a motherboard without sound output. I did have to buy a video card for my server even though it's headless. My family LOVES Netflix. We tend to watch more instant movies from Netflix than any other source. It's fun to keep the queue full so movies come constantly in the mail.

The virtual loop back is only for sound, right? I think Morgan is back on the board and might be working on it. I bought an stereo jack to rca red/white adapter cord from Radio Shack to pipe the sound across to my 500 card.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Brent

There is also the "software" loopback channel option. This doesn't require an extra sVideo or soundcard port as far as I know.

Sounds intriguing. Are there instructions or a post anywhere on how to set this up?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Sounds intriguing. Are there instructions or a post anywhere on how to set this up?

yep - on the netflix plugin thread. In the first post

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Brent

yep - on the netflix plugin thread. In the first post

Sorry... I meant the software loopback instructions. The first post on the Netflix thread has the hardware loopback instructions below.

Steps to allow viewing of Watch Now videos on an Extender (courtesy of SnapDaddy)
_______________________________________________________________________
Make sure the SVideo out of your server is working. (Test somehow - hook up to a TV, etc - whatever - set it to mirror your desktop, not span or dual monitor.)
Pick a tuner with Svideo and audio in to use for the loop-back.
Connect the audio and video out of your server into the tuner card (you will probably need to lower your screen resolution).
Configure the tuner in Sage - pick the option to not use guide data.
Add either a single channel (999) or use the built in channel "1-SVideo" to the channel list.
Test the new channel - change to it, and you should see your server desktop. If you don't, something's wrong. Best to try and fix it now.
Import the latest Netflix plugin.
In the Netflix config settings, there's an option to select your loop-back channel.
After that, it's just the standard Netflix settings. When you select to watch a video, it should switch to your channel and go to town.

[sam99]

I will put in another vote on how nice, and useful, the loopback is. You have to realize that the loopback is not just for netflix. All the loopback is doing is putting your server desktop video/sound onto whatever channel you set it to. An example of how useful this is...I have a laptop with a VNC connection to my basement server. I tuned my HD200 to channel 1 (my loopback channel) and used the laptop to navigate to Fox, I think, and played the first episode of Glee for my wife since she forgot to record the preview premier. Took me all of about 2 minutes from deciding to watch it on Fox to actually having it playing on the screen, including download time for Fox's video player. My wife was pretty pleased that it went from idea/request to viewing so quickly. So with my laptop I can play anything video/audio off the internet or simply surf the internet and everyone can see the output on the 65" screen. Not an elegant example, but we were pleased at the additional functionality of the loopback and I consider it further payback for the fiddling required to make it work.

And as long as you have some sort of audio output, not necessarily a soundcard, you can do the audio loopback. Get some cheapo tv output card for the video loopback portion. I had some old all-in-wonder laying in my spare parts pile, s-video cable and audio cable to input in to one of my two HVR-1600's that I use as my tuners and total cost of the loopback hack and additional sagetv functionality was $0, 5 minutes hooking it up and rebooting and then a couple hours to figure out the setting that I did wrong that was preventing it from working =)

On a side note, those HVR-1600's are absolute beasts! They are both inputting local over-the-air HD channels from the attic installed antenna as well as pulling TWC channels 1-99 with no tuner box, so four recordable channels at once and now one of them is doing the s-video input as well. It will simply tune the s-video or composite input depending on which channel I tune to.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Sorry... I meant the software loopback instructions. The first post on the Netflix thread has the hardware loopback instructions below.

My bad. It's described in the Slim Player Add-on thread here. I'm not 100% sure it will work with Netflix, but it's worth a try.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by Brent

My bad. It's described in the Slim Player Add-on thread here. I'm not 100% sure it will work with Netflix, but it's worth a try.

I was thinking that may be a possibility at first also. But then after taking a look I realized that that utility, Virtual Audio Cable, is only designed to transfer audio streams. Fine for radio, bad for movies.

[Brent]

Bummer. Sorry for getting your hopes up guys.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

I was thinking that may be a possibility at first also. But then after taking a look I realized that that utility, Virtual Audio Cable, is only designed to transfer audio streams. Fine for radio, bad for movies.

How poignant...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...4&postcount=81

I'll bet that this could be the answer...

Jason