You Tube / Netflix / Lovefilm

J

James Penman

New Member
I was told at the shop I bought my DTR-T1000 that I could access internet streaming such as You Tube, Netflix and Lovefilm.
Is this possible, and if so, how?
 
None of the services mentioned are available as yet and no-one can say when they may be. If this is what the OP was told then it is mis-selling and they would be able to get their money back and take their business elsewhere.
 
All connected to the internet - can watch On Demand, but partly bought this on the advice of the shop as I was told I would be able to access You Tube, Netflix and Lovefilm.
I went in to buy a Fox T2 and came out with the You View.
 
Citing the example of the HDR-FOX, quoting from the box it says "TV PORTAL (*Available in October 2010) - Sky Player - Catch-up VOD, Internet Radio and Support"

The TV Portal was 6 months late, only provides iPlayer as catch-up video-on-demand, does YouTube and Internet Radio, but has never released Sky Player (accessible by a back door using custom software).

It would not surprise me if Netflix and Lovefilm make an appearance on the 1000, presuming it has sufficient hardware capability there is a vested interest in rolling them out. However, there is no absolute certainty (sorry, I didn't realise they were not available) and if they are important to you, you should take the 1000 back stating that it does not do what you were told it would and buy something which supports these services now (many smart TVs do, and I believe several media players).
 
We get Netflix via our Panasonic Blu-ray player, so it doesn't require massive amounts of processing power- it's just a web-browser, when all's said and done.
 
It will be tapping into the hardware codecs used for DVD/Blu-ray output. Without access to the appropriate codecs in hardware, video stream decoding does require massive amounts of processing power (and RAM). The 1000 will have the hardware (probably), but the apps need to have access to it.
 
I'd imagine the 1000 does have hardware acceleration- the chipsets are hardly vastly expensive (e.g. you can serve video from a Raspberry Pi).
 
That's not my point. The HDR-FOX has hardware codecs, but only the ones the designers thought it needed. The hardware in these things is in system-on-chip - based on somebody's intellectual property (embedded IP), not bog-standard chip sets. There is usually a trade-off between SoC capacity and functionality (the bigger the silicon, the higher the final product's price point).

General purpose multi-core multi-gigahertz PC CPUs can implement any codec in software, just by writing a new routine and running it. Decisions as to which hardware codecs will be embedded in an SoC have to be frozen at a fairly early stage in the design cycle, and later developments in the world of the Internet cannot be accommodated. Example: the HDR-FOX has an MP4 codec for catch-up TV, but only the BBC provided an MP4 feed (migrating away from flv). What happened? HTML5 came along after the decisions were made, and all the other catch-up services ran that way. The BBC has ended up supporting HTML5 and MP4, something I'm sure they wish they didn't have to do.

So, like I said, unless the service is there right now, it may (but there is no certainty it will) be available in the future.
 
Broadcom chips usually have many codecs built in but only the ones you've licensed can be used.
 
Apple TV in conjunction with an HDR T2 will give some of what is wanted. The Apple TV has You Tube and Netflix built in and if you use a iPhone you can stream from it to to the Apple TV using Airplay. This works with ITV Player but not 4OD, which explicitly blocks mirroring to other devices. I tried to get round this by running 4OD in the browser forgetting that its Flash based and not supported by Apple. But 4OD is so advert ridden it's virtually unwatchable anyway so no great loss.
I believe Lovefilm also blocks Airplay - I don't use it.
 
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