Marcus Penn from a soldiersperspective.us was kind enough to send me the following writeup in which he describes his first time using the Netflix on TiVo service.
I tend to agree with everything that Marcus has to say about the service (thanks for sending this in BTW). Other than a couple of hiccups, I’ve been extremely happy thus far. Netflix on TiVo truly makes me feel like I’m getting my monies worth out of my Netflix subscription. What do you think about the Netflix on TiVo integration?
Over the weekend, I took the plunge into Netflix membership. I had been looking at joining for months and knew of the free trail, but I was sure that once I started, I wouldn’t be able to cancel. I was right.
Movie rentals are incredibly expensive these days, and the time limit involved with those rentals is too restrictive for my family consisting of a wife, a young daughter, and a son due at the end of the month. Also serving in the Marine Corps on active duty takes a better part of everyday from me. I’ve rented many movies intent on watching within the one or two day limit, but never got around to sticking them in the DVD player. Instead, I returned the movie on time as not to incur late fees that quickly outpace the original rental price.
I’m also a TiVo owner, which just sweetens the Netflix deal. Saturday morning, I sat down to watch my first streaming movie. I love comic books and noticed Superman Doomsday was available and decided it would be fun for my daughter and I to watch while my wife was away.
My TiVo is set up to use the TiVo branded wireless adapter. I wasn’t sure if the wireless router would be able to broadcast a signal strong enough to play the video in a quality worth watching. I was also concerned my small ISP wouldn’t be able to provide enough bandwidth on a Saturday morning to ensure a pleasant viewing experience. My concerns quickly melted away as the movie passed the opening logos and go into the action. Never once did the movie pause to buffer, and the audio video quality was great considering it was being streamed over the web. TiVo and Netflix deserve a lot of credit for make this work so great.
Later in the evening, I tested the streaming ability on my wife’s laptop. I noticed a huge loss in quality versus the TiVo, but the movie was watchable. I should note this was during what I would consider peak time for my ISP on a Saturday night and I wasn’t wired into the router. I did test the quality again after plugging an Ethernet cable into the laptop and routed and the quality did improve a little.
Overall, I’m very pleased with my Netflix membership thus far. The main viewing option I’ll use is the TiVo, which works wonderfully. I’ve watched the number of titles available for streaming jump over the last few months and I’m sure Netflix will keep that trend. As long as they do, I’ll be a very happy customer.
Happy to contribute and thank you for posting my impressions.
I like it. There is the occasional hiccup with respect to aspect ratio. The tops are sometimes cutoff. There is also a disadvantage with foreign movies. There is no way to get alternative languages, or English subtitles.