[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On 02/05/13 00:58, bad apple wrote:
Well I could, but as I have Netflix on my PS3, Wii, Wii U and XBOX360 and Netflix on 3 mobiles I'm not short of devices to watch it on :-)On 02/05/13 00:17, Rob Beard wrote:Netflix won't work on Linux very well (it can work through a modified version of Wine but it's fairly slow). However a lot of 'smart' Bluray players now seem to have these sort of services either integrated or available. My dad for instance has a not very smart Samsung 3D LCD TV and a smart Bluray player (I think doing it this way was a considerable saving on the next model of TV up). It also has the advantage that if he replaces his TV he gets to keep the smart features.Might be worth mentioning here that if you have a decent machine (I'd guess Intel i3+ or any vaguely modern AMD, most older quads or even duals should probably suffice with 4Gb+ RAM) you can just use a Windows or Mac (Hackintosh really, I guess) VM in fullscreen mode rather than mucking around with Wine*. For example, on the very rare occasion I want to watch something on C4 On Demand - which absolutely does *not* work on Linux - instead of arsing about with torrents or dodgy downloads I just boot, or rather unfreeze, a standard win7 VM in VirtualBox, fullscreen it, and watch away in Firefox. I can actually watch full 1080P HD movies like this with no lag as well - it works so nicely that I keep the win7 media player VM on the LAN so that any machine can connect, install VirtualBox, load the VM from the network and off it goes. It eats bandwidth though, so doesn't work over wifi.
For 1080p stuff I do have a dedicated media PC, although I've just bunged a Geforce 210 in my server to use that, I figure it's always on so it saves a little (okay probably not much) power :-)
Regarding "smart" appliances like the latest TVs and whatnot, my policy has always been as big and powerful a computer as possible for the smart bit, keep everything else as dumb as possible. I *hate* smart TVs because they're anything but, and increasingly the bane of my life. Crappy DNLA implementations are the biggest problem.
From experience my Dad's Bluray player isn't bad, not many apps available for it (it's a Samsung something or other) but he's happy enough with it.
I could bung a Windows VM on my laptop but I don't really use Windows that much at home (I've got a work laptop running Windows but I like to keep that for work stuff), I've also recently picked up a laptop running Windows 7 from a friend (was need of a bit of TLC) so that will do to keep the kids amused with Netflix, and it has HDMI out for if we go on holiday and want access to Netflix (well, depending if we have decent mobile reception or Internet access).
Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq