Sunday, January 20, 2013

Netflix 3D and Super HD tested on AppleTV3 Sony Playstation 3 and Samsung Smart LED

I tested Netflix new SuperHD and 3D content on the following devices- AppleTV3, Sony Playstation 3 and a Samsung Smart LED LCD without 3D. The AppleTV3 and Sony Playstation 3 were both tested on a 1080p 3D panasonic Projector.
The first thing you need to do is check to make sure your ISP will allow Netflix to stream SuperHD and 3D content. You can do that by going to the following URL.
https://signup.netflix.com/superhd
Lucky for me I don't use those greedy aholes at TimeWarner or ComCast and my ISP supported SuperHD and 3D streaming from Netflix. I still cant wait for Google Fiber to get to my area.
I have an 10MB plan but I really get around 8 for download speed. Middle of the road package for my ISP.
Fist I tested Netflix with Samsung LED LCD that was 1080P and NOT 3D ready. The result was NO superHD badge showing on movie info. I did see the HD badge. Upon play the content looked ok but not near BlueRay. I tried the following titles - The Lorax and The immortal's. I would say for my Samsung Smart TV it was a FAIL for SuperHD or 3D to be even offered.

Second test was with an AppleTV3 hooked up to a Panasonic 1080P HD 3D projector. The AppleTV has a fast Netflix interface but did not offer a SuperHD or 3D badge next to any content and it does not offer a way to search for just 3D or SuperHD by category. For SuperHD and 3D the AppleTV was a FAIL.

Third test was with the Sony Playstation 3 hooked up to the Panasonic 1080p HD 3D projector. I had to update the firmware on the playstation 3 for Netflix and for the playstation that took about 10 min.
After that Netflix loaded and I could see in the Movie info if the content was in SuperHD and or 3D.
I first tested by playing the immortals in 3D after selecting the the movie I was prompted with a choice of 3D playback or not. The movie loaded quickly and the quality was great! 3D looked as good as theater with little compression artifacts. I have the same title on 3D blue ray and Netflix was very close. Most people would not be able to tell the difference. When using using the Sony Playstation 3 with Netflix you can search for Just 3D titles although I found many titles that were in 3D not listed in the 3D category for instance the Immortals.  I then tested a few other titles like Meer cats in the Kalahari it looked great also tried some other lizard cartoon the kids like it and some military documentary. I did try the red bull pikes peak race and due to crappy editing it looked like well caffeinated crap.
We also tried The Lorax in SupperHD and looked real close to blueray quality.

Summary- Time-warner sucks, Blue-ray is about dead, Time to buy more stock in Netflix, Playstation 3 has the best Netflix interface, Samsung SmartTV Netflix is to slow and does not work with SuperHD and the AppleTV3 Netflix interface although the fastest just does NOT WORK WITH superHD or 3D yet.
More info on Netflix Super HD can be found on the Netflix site.
Hope it helps.
Links-
https://signup.netflix.com/superhd

http://support.netflix.com/en/node/8731#gsc.tab=0

http://www.apple.com/appletv/

http://us.playstation.com

Samsung 40 " Black LED 1080P 60HZ HDTV - UN40EH5300 (Google Affiliate Ad)http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN75ES9000FXZA

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