Nails in Optical Disc's Coffin: The Latest In A Flurry Of Recent Datapoints

Continued from ‘Roku’s Netfix Player: A Bridge To The No-Disc Future‘…

The initial queuing latency (to 64 MBytes of DRAM) on my DSL connection is 35 seconds. Netflix periodically embeds still image keyframes within the video stream, so forward and backward navigation is straightforward (you again incur the same buffering delay, however, once you reach the desired playback point in the film). You can pull up a menu of keyframes at any time by hitting the ’select’ key on your remote control. The player even remembers where you’ve left off, if you exit a movie and later re-access it.

Netflix touts ~10,000 pieces of content (roughly 10% of the company’s complete disc library) freely available via Watch Now!, to all service subscribers save those in the lowest pricing tier. Granted, there aren’t many recent Hollywood blockbusters in the list, with the notable exception of the excellent Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, but I still found plenty to queue up (including a number of television series). Then again, I’m a fan of documentaries, obscure independent films, and the like; more mainstream viewers might be less impressed.

Netflix and Roku claim that the unit is inherently capable of playing back high-definition content, and of passing surround sound along to a receiver for decoding purposes. The latter objective should be fairly easy to accomplish, although it may involve WMA-to-Dolby Digital real-time transcoding (with accompanying lip sync delay adjustment) within the Netflix Player. As for the former, I suspect it’ll be restricted to users with much higher-bandwidth broadband tethers than myself, since the Netflix Player’s lack of an integrated HDD precludes the necessary progressive-download buffering capacity.

The lack of a HDD for content-caching purposes also precludes a P2P-based distribution topology; all of the material comes from Netflix’s server pool. I’ll be curious to see how well the currently impressive experience scales as more users hop on board. On that note, I doubt the Netflix Player will be a huge success, in spite of its tempting low price tag; there’s the (currently) limited content factor to consider, along with the fact that the unit’s intimately tied to a Netflix membership, and folks’ understandable reluctance to add yet another box to their home theater stack. With that said, I suspect that Netflix will quickly resolve both the limited-content and another-box issues.

The company has a fundamental motivation to get folks hooked on online video distribution, after all, so that it no longer has to (expensively) hassle with obtaining, warehousing, shipping, receiving and otherwise managing shiny plastic discs (Blockbuster has a similar motivation, of course, but seems to be slower getting its Movielink-acquisition vision out the door). And there’s really no reason why a networked device such as a DVD or Blu-ray player, or a game console, couldn’t be Watch Now!-enhanced. I’ll be curious to see how long it takes for the necessary partnerships to get forged; I’d wager that the first fruits will emerge in time for the Christmas 2008 shopping season.

For now, however, Netflix subscribers (and potential subscribers) with $100 burning a hole in their pockets should seriously consider snagging Roku’s new unit. Even though I’ve had a laptop computer tethered to my LCD and sound system for many months now, I’ve only viewed a few Watch Now! films. But with a dedicated box available to do the duty, manipulated by an easy-to-use remote control, I strongly suspect I’ll be more regularly availing myself of the service going forward.

p.s…if you don’t want to make the Roku hardware investment, but you have an Xbox 360 or other Media Center Extender box, take a look at this hands-on evaluation (thanks to Engadget for the heads-up) of three free PC-based utilities that’ll similarly stream Watch Now! material. Granted, they’re not Netflix-sanctioned and, now that Roku’s system is released, Netflix will probably be even more motivated than in the past to squelch unsanctioned access to its content. But for now, especially if you have a Windows Vista-powered system, the enthusiast-developed alternatives look promising.