Gauging Interest in Native Netflix support for Client PC

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I didn't think the Boxee software did screen grabbing. I thought it just had a special browser that was careful how it placed the Flash or Silverlight object. I thought the reason HD, and even SD video, is hard on it is that in general HD video in Silverlight and Flash is pretty bad to a lack of decent hardware acceleration, and generally bad decoders and upscalers (Flash's upscaler seems to be particularly CPU intensive, if I remember correctly).

Unfortunately, Boxee PC (not Box) does "screen" grab (from a hidden window) for Netflix, Hulu (when its working) and some others -- I never quite understood that design decision. It uses an embedded Mozilla browser to render the player in a hidden window, then grabs a portion of that hidden window and scales it to Boxee's player window -- and in the end, no HD, with barely usable SD on many systems. (At least this is the way it still was a few months back.)

HD works perfectly fine on Silverlight/Netflix with Vista/7. Flash still has issues (scaling) on some systems, but it's especially bad if you're trying to use it through Boxee's convoluted screen grabber.

[shatter]

I just got done moving my HTPC from behind the TV into a closet where it can be noisy without causing people to be annoyed and it cleaned up the room nicely. I'd jump all over giving you seed money to get the project going if it worked on the HD300, otherwise the plugin has no value to me.

At this point, I am looking at either a Roku or moving my xbox 360 into the family room. Thanks for taking on this project though for all the folks that still have a box by the television, I know you'll have a lot of excited folks waiting for the fruits of your labor!

Thanks!