A Netflix subscriber since 2000, I was curious about
the increasing number of options available “on-demand” so I recently bought
a Roku box to further investigate how far things have come since trialing a
movie on my computer when the instant service was first launched. This
article walks you though the setup, basic operation, and take away
experience from using this service versus the tried and true
through-the-mail video rental service.
It took about a week to get the hardware which
consisted of a Roku box ($99.99 + $14.99 shipping) plus $17.16 for a Belkin
HDMI cable from Amazon – didn’t pay tax on either and of course Amazon ships
for free if you buy at least $25 per order. Roku offers an HDMI add-on
option for $19.95 but since you don’t know what kind of cable is associated
with this option, I opted for a known brand – ordered on the same day –
Amazon delivered cable 3 days before Roku but your total wait is around 6
days and the final bill came to $132.14
Setup is pretty simple, connect Roku to plasma with
HDMI, connect power to Roku and follow the directions – all of which were
dead on. When you plug in the Roku, you get the “launching home screen” page
which takes a while for the software to load. Once this loads a setup wizard
streamlines configuration (which requires no typing) - just point and click
through a series of screens.
The Roku’s setup mainly involves some minimum hand
holding as you walk through helping it connect to your home network. Roku
comes with support for either wired or wireless networking. Surprisingly,
wireless works extremely well and the Roku facilitates connection to your
home wireless network quickly and painlessly. Simply select wireless option
and Roku responds by locating available wireless networks and finally select
the network you want to use to gain access to the Internet.
Upon connection to the Internet, Roku basic
configuration for standard 480i (4x3) resolution is complete. If you used an
HDMI or component video cable to connect your television/monitor, you can
take advantage of an additional display option of 720p (16x9) by completing
one last configuration step – an extra step that is outside the normal setup
flow - would be nice if Roku detected this and configured this option
automatically.
To gain access to Netflix, you need to link your
subscription account to your Roku box. While this sounds complicated, the
software has made this task extremely easy. Once you select Netflix, you
have the option to trial the service or if you are already a customer, link
your Roku box to your account. The linking is done through the entry of a
code generated by the Roku on the next screen.
You are then instructed to log on to your Netflix
account (from your computer), type in the URL on the screen, and then enter
the activation code on your TV. I personally think this is one of few
mistakes Netflix makes as they force users to enter the URL rather than just
having an easy link to “Activate Box” within their website – such a step
would be nice, but it is an easy URL to type. Regardless, once you click the
Activate button, the website pauses briefly:
And then comes back with activation is complete on the
web site. This completes the linking and now you are ready to pick and watch
movies instantly through your Netflix account using your Roku box.
While Netflix has over 100,000 movie titles available
through-the-mail, it only offers over 12,000 movies available instantly
(some in HD, but most in SD). Within the Netflix site, it manages instant
movies the same way it does through-the-mail movies – using a Queue.
However, the instant queue is separate and distinct from the
through-the-mail Queue (which is just called your DVD Queue).
To view movies on your Roku, you need to add movies to
your “Instant” queue. This is handled by finding movies of interest among
those available instantly (these movies are listed under the instant tab on
the Netflix website) and then adding them to the “Instant Queue”. Since
instant movies can also be watched instantly from your computer, you have to
tell the website what you want to do with the title. So, when you pass your
cursor over the play button, you are given the option to either play the
movie NOW (on your computer) or “Add to Instant [Queue]” which is how the
movie becomes available to play on the Roku box.
Once you add to the Instant Queue, auto-magically the
new queued item pops up on your Roku list within seconds, so rather than
watching the selected title on your computer monitor, you can watch in 720p
resolution on your plasma in brilliant fashion.
Before we get into the operation, it’s worth a few
words to talk about Roku’s meaning of HD. While clearly this “instant”
service is not the rich clarity and picture you get from Blu-ray 1080p discs
(which will for some time be at the pinnacle of video quality), the Roku’s
delivered quality is slightly better than normal DVD and likely comparable
to “HD service” delivered via Satellite or some cable operators (least those
that pushing 3-4 HD channels on a single transport). Until these “HD
services” scale back on the compression, Netflix “instant” service is going
to look increasingly compelling to cable’s own VoD service with a much
deeper and readily accessible library. I use “HD service” loosely here as
clearly there seems to be a lot of wiggle room here in terms of what one can
deliver and still call it HD. So, while we can say Blu-ray delivers HD I’m
still looking for a term to describe those services delivering less than
1080p.
Operating Roku has few quarks but the user interface is
clean, simple, does what it needs to with not a lot of fluff or
distractions. All you do is select a title from your instant queue which is
displayed using arrow buttons, select the play option (note Roku remembers
if you didn’t finish watching a movie so it gives you the option of resuming
where you left off):
And then wait a small bit (typically around 30 seconds)
for the movie to buffer before the content begins to play. As soon as the
buffer is loaded, the movie begins automatically. You can also pause, stop,
or skip forward or backward (similar to a DVD where you pick a scene and the
player will go to that scene). The only caveat is that if you skip to a new
location in the movie, the player will have to reload the buffer from that
point so it will take another 30 seconds before resuming the movie at that
new location. Normal pause and resume play do not experience any delay
however.
Netflix has done a decent job handling multiple episode
titles. For example the instant movie titles include the complete series of
“Kolchak: The Night Stalker” which is a childhood favorite of mine. When
such a title is selected that is part of a series, you can either play the
series in order (unlikely), or select among those series that is of
interest. Since the box art is the same, one can page through the various
episodes which are numbered but included with the number is the name of the
episode, length, and a brief sentence about the episode. Of course, Roku
remembers which episodes you have already watched and grays those out.
Roku also allows you to interface with some of the
Netflix core features like rating movies and once watched, the movie can be
removed from the instant queue from the Roku box interface. I imagine over
time Netflix would want to expand the features of its instant client, but as
basic as these features are this instant client is years ahead of comparable
10 year old cable VoD clients currently deployed which don’t support a
favorites list or user rating.
messed around with the playback and network
connections during operation and discovered some interesting bits about the
service. During one test, I allowed the player to complete its buffering,
and then play the movie for 60 seconds. After which, I disconnected my DSL
service to see what would happen. After terminating the service, the movie
went on playing for about 55 seconds after which a new dialog popped up on
the Roku: saying “can’t connect to the Internet”
As smart as the Roku is, when the network connection is
restored and you select “try again” it forces you through the network setup
pages. While it does take you back to the movie you were watching (which you
can resume where you left off – e.g. at the time the buffer ran dry) it is
NOT YET smart enough to just recognize the connection is back up. It would
be nice if the Roku’s “try again” could just attempt to reconnect using
previously stored info. If it can’t find the network allow retry again or
reconfigure the network as options. If it does find the network, it should
re-populate the buffer and change the dialog to that similar to pause so the
user could just un-pause to resume the movie. Not a serious flaw, but also
not “completely” thought through from a usability perspective. If the
network connection is restored before the buffer runs dry, the service
recovers and presumably catches up to replenish the buffer while going on
playing the movie without interruption.
In conclusion, Netflix “instant” video isn’t really
what I would call VoD. Instead, it’s a variant like NVoD but on a whole new
playing field. At the heart of the system is the Queue management and
recommendation engine which is an area Netflix is light years ahead. In a
previous article (Brushing the dust off long tail VoD titles) I described
the concept of managing a favorites list through multiple means (television,
wireless phone, computer, etc.). The concept is this, if you see a movie or
even something that reminds you of a movie you want to see, you can add it
to your list and if time permits, prioritize this title within the list. The
trigger could be as simple as flipping through channels on your TV, coming
across yet another showing of “Die Hard” and saying, I’ve not seen this in a
while, I want to watch it so you add it to your queue. Then when you sit
down to watch a movie, you call up the favorites list and select among those
you have previously indicated you want to see. It’s a superior form of
structuring VoD in a usable way than some laborious exercise of trying to
list a movie library on the TV screen and force the user to make a choice
then and there. Cable’s atom splitting VoD problem of listing its entire
movie library is equivalent to Netflix trying to list its library – only you
don’t see Netflix trying to list 100,000 movies on its thin client. If you
look at VoD in this way, Netflix already has one key piece in place (thin
client access to the instant Queue). What’s next? I believe they will look
seriously into how to trigger additions to the Queue via other methods –
cell phones, television ads, grocery checkouts, etc. Look for Netflix to
leverage its relationship with Microsoft to add such capability to its
popular Windows CE operating system and gaming system to make my proposed
spontaneous favorite’s list additions reality.
Check out these other Birds-Eye.Net papers/products
regarding Video on Demand (VoD):
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