About 2 months ago, I was contacted by Netflix and informed that they were now officially supporting streaming movies through the internet via the PS3. The html eMail I was sent presented me with the option to sign up. I did. Netflix sent me a single layer BD disk loaded with a fancy graphical BD-Live shell. Using this disk, I could browse Netflix streamable library and see whatever I liked via the BD-Live technology.
How well does it work? Given my solid bandwidth of 17-21 Mbits, it works great. There are never any visible hickups.
I heard there were a lot of hickups? Your badwidth is pretty poor then.
How good does it look? This depends upon the video itself. "A Boy and His Dog" looked like dogshit. The quality was far below that of DVD or SDTV. "Inside Deepthroat" was nearly 720p in quality.
Does it ever compete with Blu-Ray in terms of quality? Absolutely not. Not even close. The quality is acceptable, but not nearly that of Blu-Ray. Most of the time, the video quality is lower than that of DVD, not higher. They need to consistently beat DVD before they can even address Blu-Ray.
How rich is the selection of movies? You will not find any of the more recent (past two years) blockbusters available for streaming. You will find that most titles listed here are 5 years or older. Television shows are the only things that seem to become available rapidly. As long as you are willing to watch 4 and 5 year old films, there is quite a bit to see.
What physical installation requirements did you have to go through to make it work? Not much. I already had a high-quality D-Link wired and wireless router sitting in front of my Cable modem. All I needed to do was run a 50 foot Cat-6 wire from the router to the PS3, and then stick the Netflix disk in. It worked pretty much immediately.
Why didn't you go wireless? Because I like wires better. Wires are more reliable, provide much higher bandwidth, and have less latency. One of the reasons I have no problems is because I am willing to work with a hardwire.
But aren't wires messy? That sounds like a personal problem you have there.
Do you think this will replace Blu-Ray? Nope. Absolutely not. The quality is so inferior to Blu-Ray it is not on the same playing field. When they can't even tackle DVD, how can they defeat Blu-Ray?
Oh, but somebody smart told me that streaming media would replace Blu-Ray? That statement is an oxymoron. Your statement refutes itself.
What good is this then? I find it has opened up a whole world of documentary films that I probably would not have seen. Most of these documentary films are available only as DVDs, and I would not have wasted my precious rental slots asking for DVD quality materials. Now I can stream an unlimited quantity of these docs to my PC. It is pretty cool.
