Monday, July 04, 2011

After trying Netflix in the States, I'm trying out Netflix Canada. The selection is really terrible. Of the fifteen movies I have on my Zip queue, Netflix had only one, CRONOS. And my Zip queue isn't that obscure. I have INCENDIES (Canada's Oscar nominee this year); Antonioni's classic L'AVVENTURA (Cannes Jury Prize 1960); THE DESCENT; BAD INFLUENCE; Neal Jordan's A COMPANY OF WOLVES; DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE; Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST; and I AM LEGEND, starring Will Smith.

Netflix.ca seems to be good for people who want to watch something. It's not for people who want to watch something in particular.

Although they do have all those VEGGIE TALES for Jesse.

I also had a technical issue with CRONOS. It looked jerky, as if only ever other frame was showing. (It looked step-framed.) My guess is that, rather than reducing the image quality when the bandwidth is insufficient, they just transmit fewer frames. It's pretty hard to watch. If you google "netflix streaming jerky," you get a lot of hits, but the solutions available are for PC's; if you're streaming to your brand new DVD player, you're hosed.

So far, this is very much not a cable killer. It could be, but it's far from there.

Labels: distribution technology

9:57 AM

3 Comments:

The selection could be a lot better.

I haven't had any problems watching Netflix stuff on my iMac, Wii, iPhone or AppleTV receiver. None.

(I selected the High Quality option when I set up my account, so that might be a factor.)

By  Anonymous, at 3:44 PM  

Cronos is just a bad transfer, I've seen that one. To get technical it's what video looks like when the interlaced field order is flagged improperly. For the most part, my Netflix Canada stream looks awesome. I have a really fast DSL connection. I recently watched Buckaroo Banzai in HD and it looked fantastic. You can't even get that movie in HD on blu-ray yet. The Canadian selection is getting better, but you really have to dig for stuff. Also, I noticed while the US has way more stuff, a lot more of it is in Standard Def only. The Canada Netflix seems to have a higher ratio of HD material.

By  Coltrane, at 11:51 PM  

The selection on Canadian Netflix is so bad, and a even a year in, it hasn't had any noteworthy improvement.

It's ok for a bunch of kids stuff and some older series, I guess. Really, the only thing that makes me log back into it is to watch things without commercials interrupting every three minutes.

By  Nina, at 11:17 AM  

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