There were more than a thousand reeds, springing up like weeds

[rolanni]

As advertised elsewhere, Steve and I knocked off early last night and watched The Music Man. It turned into a two-part viewing when the portable-back-up DVD player pitched a fit and stopped working immediately following Harold leaving the library after bedeviling Marian. We brought the disk back to my office and watched the last half on my computer. Handy things, computers.

Who can explain this Netflix over-the-web delivery system to me? I need special equipment for the television, right; if I want to watch movies with my husband couch in the living room? Any guesses how that whole thing is going to play out, now that Netflix has committed to phasing out DVDs, given the sell-out of net neutrality by the FCC?

Absent burning questions of bread and circuses, today was About the Chores. I finished pushing the last of the snow that I could move off the deck — the rest is remanded to solar power. I washed dishes, dusted, did almost all the laundry, took care of the cat boxes and did some work on George.

Steve made French toast for breakfast and salmon cakes for supper. Hmm. I wonder what’s for lunch.

I note, in the spirit of sharing the joy, that the income tax papers from our accountant have arrived. Sigh.

Tomorrow, sadly, is Thursday. Only four more days of winter break left. *wonders where she put the time turner*

Progress on The Book Presently Known as George:
20,008 words/100,000 OR 20.01% complete

“I have to see my mother,” Syl Vor said sternly. “On a matter of importance to us both.”

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[gingerwood.livejournal.com]

There are any number of devices that can stream netflix. I use a roku box. There's also the apple tv box and most gaming systems (Wii, xbox ect).

The roku, at least is pretty straight forward to setup. You attach it your home network using a wizard, then go to netflix to get a code, which you suply to the box and walla, you are connected.

You do need pretty good bandwidth for it to work well.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

Good bandwith is a must. I will admit to having some problems with my Netflix on my Wii when it went to a system that didn't use a disc in my Wii.

Also some Blu ray players are also netflix capable. The downside to streaming is you can only stream one thing at a time so no one person watch something on the laptop and another person watch something else on another machine.

[mickilmp.livejournal.com]

It's also possible that you won't require a specific device if you are able to treat your TV as a monitor. You could potentially connect a computer/laptop to a TV and stream through the web browser.

Thanks for the stories.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

You/we may get some help with the deck snow -- supposed to be mid-40s and even some rain, Sunday.

[grassrose.livejournal.com]

We've only watched Netflix on our beefy desktop, where it's quite acceptable; however, we used to stream "Saving Grace" from the TNT website via my overgrown netbook (Asus N10J) to our old (but still nice) Sony WEGA TV with this gadget:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X3FAJU

It's pure VGA, because while my netbook has an HDMI out, the TV doesn't have an HDMI in. It takes a little tweaking of the settings to get it right, but I had read the Amazon user reviews and that only took a few minutes. Picture quality is fair - limited by our TV and by the horsepower of the netbook. "Pebbles" has a discrete graphics card, but runs the old Atom processor, so it isn't the ideal media solution.

If you have a laptop with some more processing power, plus a good bandwidth, an adapter box like the one above should do fine. We average 11Mb down, but I think Netflix will throttle to a lower speed, within reason.

If your laptop and TV permit, add an HDMI connection and the appropriate converter/adapter to the above resources, and you'll have a really decent setup.

Hope this helps!

[alicebentley]

Yipes, I had not heard that Netflix is dropping DVDs. I wonder how that will affect the production studio's choices of which things to publish?

Netflix

[(Anonymous)]

Has anyone tried streaming netflix with uverse? Inquiring minds would love to know.

Head shaking; George

[claire774.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping someday this TV vs internet thing or which is the best way to receive Netflix thing will become simple. Right now it's way too complicated for little ole me. I just have a DVR box from Dish TV. It can record on two channels at once if that's what you want to do. There's plenty of movies to record. Right now I have HBO and Starz. Maybe a little expensive though. The local stores rent DVDs. However, a specialty movie like The Music Man.....I think I posted before...... that the community theater in our little town put on a great performance of the Music Man earlier this year. I had never seen it before. I have a lot of VHS tapes. I was just told that when I can no longer buy a VHS/DVD machine I should just replace my favorite tapes with DVDs bought from some convenient source. I don't have much time to watch anything so for me Netflix through the mail with a set price per month doesn't make sense.

My turn to shovel snow. It started snowing here....raining in Los Angeles....last night at about 2:00 pm. Still snowing now. Should quit by tomorrow. I certainly hope. Luckily I have very little area that I have to keep clear.

Glad to see that George is jumping numbers of words by leaps and bounds. Encouraging.
C.

[rcartwright (from livejournal.com)]

For what you describe, a rouku box is the way to go. Amazon is running a $20 off special till the end of the year that would take the price down to $59.00. The two things you have to have for Netflix and rouku box to work is a reliable high speed internet connection and a wifi router, although an ethernet connection from router and rouku box is better if possible.

[elbales]

Love the George snippet. Of course it's Nova's son who would, even as a halfling-or-slightly-younger, be stern.

[james b franks (from livejournal.com)]

Most blue-ray players will also get netflix. Since you will be looking for a replacement DVD player that may be the way to go.

here is an amazon search

[james b franks (from livejournal.com)]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_sc_4_27?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=blu+ray+player+with+netflix&sprefix=blu+ray+player+with+netflix

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

We've been very happy with both Netflix through our Samsung Bluray & DVD player and also through our Wii, but we do have Fios Internet. The kids prefer the Wii option (without the disk nowadays) because they can pick out the movies there. For watching through the DVD player, we usually add movies to the queue on the computer and then pull up the queue to watch them.

[dormantdrake.livejournal.com]

I just use my PS3 to stream Netflix, since I already have it for games. (Although since buying it over a year ago I've found I rarely use it for games, but instead watch things on Netflix, Vudu, Hulu... It has the added bonus that it plays BluRay discs and, you know, the occasional game.)