Netflix or LoveFilm?

If you’ve been asking yourself that question, my article comparing the two is now live on RegHardware.

Broadly speaking, I think that I’m more likely to keep paying for Netflix after the end of the free period, but that’s because I tend to enjoy working my way through some of the ‘box set’ type material that they have, and I don’t personally think that LoveFilm has a great TV selection right now. If I were more into watching films, then I’d likely make a different choice – but during the week, I don’t tend to watch TV that much in the evenings, and for me delving into another episode of something on Netflix when there’s nothing more to watch will be a lot more likely than sitting down to watch a whole film.

The other factor is that the TV set I’m presently using – a Samsung D8000 – will have to go back to the PR folk soon, and my own set, a Panasonic V10, doesn’t support any of these services. But I can still access Netflix using my iPod touch and play it through the dock on the AV system, and I’m looking forward to trying out one of the Roku media players too, which will be slightly better solution.

BBC details of the Streetdance 3D broadcast

Regular readers will recall that at the start of the month, I wrote about the broadcast of Streetdance 3D on the BBC HD channel, and speculated about the method that was being used to provide support for 2D viewers.

In a blog post today, Ant Miller at BBC R&D reveals how it was done.

What can you watch with IPTV?

The first of my articles for RegHardware’s IPTV week has just been published. It gives an overview of what sort of content is available via the main IPTV services in the UK.

Inview ties up with Acetrax

While many of the video streaming services such as LoveFilm and Netflix are only to be found on the higher end TV sets from companies like LG, Panasonic and Samsung, Swiss firm Acetrax is looking to extend its reach still further.

The company – which offers content on a pay as you go basis, with material to rent or buy – has teamed up with Inview to roll out the service across set top boxes that support their new connected TV platform.

Acetrax, running on Inview's new connected TV platform

Inview is perhaps best known to some people in the UK as the providers of the EPG data that drives the Radio Times Extra (formerly Teletext Extra) and TopUpTV services, but they also have a connected TV platform rolling out, which is available royalty free to ‘tier 2’ equipment manufacturers who don’t want to have to create their own. Inview then makes its revenue as a share of that generated by content providers such as Acetrax.

Acetrax is going to be on that new platform, along with Grooveshark and some other services, around the middle of this year. A spokesperson for Inview wouldn’t reveal the names of the brands involved, but I understand that it’s likely to appear in FreeviewHD set top boxes and connected TVs from the house brands of major UK retailers, and similar brands around Europe. There will probably also be some SD kit that includes it too, though given the closing gap between the prices of SD and HD kit, I suspect all but those on the tightest budget will be looking at HD, especially with the Olympics coming up this summer.

The new platform apparently integrates apps and a recommendation engine with Inview’s 14 day programme guide, rather than splitting content services off into a separate part of the interface, as is common with most of the ‘smart TVs’ I’ve looked at recently. It’s only slated to appear on new equipment; most of the kit that has the existing Inview software isn’t equipped for IPTV anyway.

Inview's TV guide

Aiming at second tier manufacturers, Inview's platform will try to integrate IP services with the EPG

Using Netflix with a Yamaha iPod dock

I’ve been playing with Netflix, like a lot of people, seeing what the new service is like. In short – you’ll be able to read a longer article next week on Register Hardware – I like it. For the sort of things I want to watch, the £5.99 is a pretty good deal.

There’s one niggle; my own TV set is one of the first generation Panasonic VieraCast sets, which doesn’t even support AceTrax, and isn’t going to get an update for things like that, so there’ll be no Netflix. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a Samsung 8000 series set here for testing, which is a great bit of kit, but sadly it’ll be going back soon.

Is that the end of my Netflix usage? Perhaps not; there’s an iOS app for Netflix, and I do have an iPod Touch. I also have a dock for my AV amp, which I’ve used in the past to play video from the iPod through the TV, taking advantage of the free weekly downloads from Orange.

That works pretty well, though I do have to alter the settings in the AV amp to stop video processing, if I want the picture to fill the screen. The amp is a Yamaha RX-V667, and I’m using the YDS-12 dock.

The problem

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well with Netflix; when you plug the iPod (or iPhone) in to the dock, you get an on-screen menu that can be used to select movies and music on the iPod. If you’re playing content, like movie rentals from iTunes, that appears in the menus, that’s fine – when you select a movie, the menus go away.

Start up Netflix and start watching, and you get this, instead:

Yamaha's dock menu overlays the video from the iPod - not much use for Netflix

I tried in vain using the obvious options to get rid of this, checking all the settings in the menus, and using that ‘x’ at the bottom right of the screen. No joy. The sound and video play fine, with the dock menu sitting on top.

The fix

Googling turned up the answer, and it’s thankfully a simply one: Just press the ‘rec’ button on the AV receiver’s remote control, and the menu disappears, until the next time you plug your iOS device in. I don’t know why they chose that, instead of the ‘close’ icon on the screen, but at least now you’ll be able to use an iPod touch or iPhone with your Yahama dock to enjoy Netflix full screen, if it’s not built in to your TV set.

Netflix arrives on UK Samsung SmartTV

Like many people, I suspect, I’ve been waiting eagerly for Netflix, and specifically for the client for Samsung’s SmartTV system. This morning, I was in luck – going into the SmartTV section, I was prompted for an update, which added Netflix in the ‘Recommended’ section of the App list.

Netflix on the Samsung SmartTV hub

That’s not all you need to do, however. After updating the SmartTV software, launching Netflix prompted me to update the TV’s firmware, and told me what buttons to press. You can go directly there, which many users might be tempted to do, while the instructions are on screen.

Unfortuantely, you can’t do that – if SmartTV is running, then you can’t update the firmware, so you need to back right out of it to the live TV signal, before you can update the firmware. That took my set from version 001018 to 001021. It takes a few minutes, and after that, you can go back in and start the Netflix app.

You’ll be asked if you’ve signed up, and if you say no, you then have to fire up a browser on your PC or Mac, and register for the trial that way; once that’s been done, you can sign in on the TV with your email address and password.

Sign up on your PC or Mac to activate Netflix

Sign in with an email address and password

It’s worth noting that, though the default way of signing up is via your Facebook account, there’s a link just below to register with an email address instead, so you don’t end up annoying your friends by constantly advertising Netflix to them. The default option selected when you finally get into Netflix proper on the TV is once again to link to your Facebook id, so they’re clearly pretty keen for you to do it.

Netflix seems keen for you to link to your Facebook account

I’m writing a more in depth piece for Register Hardware, which I’ll link to when it’s live.

More 3D on BBC HD – Streetdance

If you thought that the final of Strictly Come Dancing in 3D was all you were going to get from the BBC over the holidays, you might have missed an unexpected treat on New Year’s Day, in the form of Streetdance 3D, on the BBC HD channel.

I watched this mostly because it features dance dreamboat Richard Winsor, whom I’ve seen several times at Sadler’s Wells, but also because I was a little curious about it being broadcast in 3D. It was only a few days ago I posted here that it would be inconceivable that 3D broadcasts wouldn’t, for the time being at least, be accompanied by a 2D simulcast for those without a 3D set. Yet the film was scheduled only on the BBC HD channel, so what was happening?

The clue, it turned out, was in the red button. Switching to the channel while the film was on showed the familiar double image of a side-by-side HD broadcast, where the picture is split down the middle, with an image for each eye on one side of the screen.

Repeated on each side was a red button icon labelled ‘Watch in 2D’, and pressing that switched to the 2D version. So far, nothing unusual there. And my first thought was that it was a simulcast, perhaps using one of the interactive streams that wasn’t needed for anything else.

Except that the 2D version looked better quality than standard definition, and I don’t think there’d be the capacity, even on a day when there’s no sports, to manage that. Another give-away was that there wasn’t any break in either picture or sound when switching between the two. Normally, if the box has to tune to another stream, there’ll be at least a momentary break in both.

Technical tricks

So, how was it done? My guess – I’m waiting for the BBC to confirm, but I’m 99% certain – is that it was all done with MHEG, the interactive ‘red button’ service. This was evident when the application was still available during the following programme.

Pressing Red simply turned on or off one of the useful features that MHEG provides, which is video scaling. Taking advantage of the side-by-side format, the application simply took the left side of the screen, and zoomed it to fill the whole screen; obviously there’s a small loss of horizontal resolution in doing that, compared to broadcasting a full screen HD picture, but it still looked better than SD, and meant there was no glitch on switching formats.

How do I know it was the left hand side? ‘A little Later’ was on after the film, and the application was still live for at least a part of that, with the icon appearing twice on screen. Pressing Red during that zoomed the left side of the screen, losing the right.

So, I’d say that on the evidence so far, it looks like it’s perfectly possible to provide a 2D/3D simulcast without using any extra bandwidth. The downsides are that resolution isn’t quite as high as for HD, and 2D viewers have to take a positive action to see the ‘normal’ version, unlike the Strictly simulcast, where they just tuned to a 2D version.

You probably wouldn’t want to use this for a BBC One programme, because it would end up on the standard def channel version of the channel (unless that can be fed separately from the HD version), and a lot of older set top boxes don’t have an up to date MHEG engine which can handle the video scaling, so wouldn’t be able to switch to 2D; all HD boxes should have the necessary software, as long as they are FreeviewHD certified.

Incompatible equipment

That means, incidentally, that users of the 3View box probably wouldn’t have been able to select 2D, as it doesn’t have MHEG built in, and the same would be true of people watching with a generic satellite receiver, rather than a Sky or Freesat branded one.

So, this is also potentially interesting from that point of view; whatever equipment you have, even a generic satellite or HD terrestrial tuner, you would have been able to watch in 3D. But only equipment compliant with one of the UK’s platforms – FreeviewHD, Freesat or Sky – would have given 2D viewers the opportunity to select that version of the broadcast.

This sort of thing is not going to happen very often, but nevertheless it raises interesting questions about exactly what equipment should be supported by the BBC, and might well be seen by some as pushing people towards platform-compliant equipment.