Netflix Roku versus TiVo/Unbox

So Pogue wrote a little something about the new Roku Netflix box.  The ten second summary: Netflix now has a set top box that allows you to stream movies from Netflix using their streaming movie service.  No additional charge (other than the hardware cost) and you can take more than 24 hours to watch it.  Pogue admits that there are other services - expressly naming Amazon (Unbox) and TiVo - but says that each of these "is fatally flawed."  Not so the Netflix/Roku player.

 

This all sounds great, but frankly I think Pogue and everyone else is making a mountain out of molehill and not crediting Amazon/TiVo the props they deserve.

 

The fatal flaw that Pogue mentions?  Well, it's either that you have to download it and watch it on your computer, or you only get (horrors!) 24 hours to watch the movie.

 

The first flaw is a problem - as he says, not many people want to watch Lord of the Rings in a desk chair; we want to watch it on TV.  The Unbox/TiVo solution is excellent, though.  While you have to shell out more money for your Roku or Vudu or AppleTV box, you've probably already got the TiVo to do what TiVo's do - digitally record your tv programs.  This is just an added feature, one that makes the TiVo set a multitasker - and a hell of a one at that!

 

But the second is something of a red herring, in my opinion.  The Roku box doesn't have better technology than the TiVo/Unbox combo; in fact it's more primitive: it's simply a dedicated streaming video player - there's no storage that I can tell, it just hooks itself up to Netflix's servers and streams the data into the (most likely) flash-based player in the box - similar to the way your MS browser on your computer grabs it.  There is nothing in the technology that necessarily inhibits the Unbox/TiVo from doing more than a 24 hour rental.  The fact that practically everyone is susceptible to this 24 hour rental model suggests it is the corporate lawyers and the other industry players decreeing a 24 hour limit - it's DRM, not an issue with the player or service. 

 

There is nothing that technologically allows the Roku box to get around this DRM issue.  What the Roku/Netflix box has going for it is that, since it's an extension of NetFlix and these are streaming media, it's subsumed in your subscription (not actually free).  That doesn't mean that NetFlix has really gotten around the 24 hour limit - they've just nullified its effect.  How?

 

First, as Pogue points out, these aren't cutting edge movies - they are older titles and a lot of crap that have progressed through the industry's various "windows."  You know when you would go to Blockbuster and you could take out the really old titles for a week at a time?  Why?  Nobody cared - there was no demand, they had been on tv for years, and income from renting them was seen as gravy.  But try to take a hot, "new" title (an appellation that would still pertain like 2 years after its release) - and you had ... 24 hours (later expanded to 2 days, as I recall). 

 

Second,  it's streaming video.  It's not being stored on your hard drives, so again no one cares.  But because of that, quality and ease of use (see Pogue's description of "tv" quality video on a 2.2M cable connection and the rewind/fast forward concessions) suffer.  Not to mention - what happens when you're network isn't quite up to snuff - or is getting hammered because all of your neighbors are also using the service.  (Have I mentioned lately that I hate Comcast?)

 

Third, to the extent that anyone does care - it doesn't matter; it's free!  Watch half an hour of this old title, stop the feed, get back two days later and restream the feed, skipping through the parts you've seen.  You're not paying any more for the service, and Netflix is beaming the same amount of this uncared for schlock as if you were watching something new.

 

And again, I'm not saying this Netflix/Roku box isn't good.  I like Netflix, and this is a very nice addition (even if I have to pay $99), and we might very well end up getting one for us and for our families.  What I'm saying is someone ought to recognize what the TiVo/Unbox service brings, instead of bashing it as "fatally flawed."

 

The Unbox stuff is really quite cool....  Pogue even thought so, too.  I can select the videos on the TiVo AND on the computer; on the computer I can select for watching on computer or on the TiVo.  (It appears that you have to get on your computer and set up your Netflix instant view queue in order to see it on your Roku box.)  If I buy a movie, it keeps it on the Unbox server, so I can delete the movie from my TiVo to save space, and then redownload it when I want to watch it again.  I think I can even start to watch the movie before it finishes downloading. I can start a download from Unbox at work to my TiVo, and then it's available on TiVo when I get home.  It takes a little while to download, but the video quality is better and I get better control of the movie.  In fact, the Unbox is really tightly interwoven into TiVo - it operates just like a TiVo video, and TiVo's swivel search will find Unbox titles. 

 

But most upsetting to me is that everyone is making a big deal out of this 1 day rental thing.  I don't get it. 

 

First, Unbox allows you to download the movie, wait up to a month, and then start watching it.  My wife's response to this complaint was logical - I think the issue is sometimes you get a movie, and then something comes up, and you don't get to it right away.  And I can see that; been there myself.  But Unbox's 30 day "rental period" followed by a 24 hour "viewing period" gets around this problem rather elegantly.

 

Second, especially if you just get the movie and none of the extra material, how many people take more than a day to watch a movie, and how often do they do that?  When I finally get a chance to sit down and watch a movie, the chances are very good I am going to watch that whole movie in one sitting.  While a lot of people squawk about it, I have some serious questions about how many people take multiple sittings to watch a movie once they start.  Yes, I can imagine situations in which it might take a couple of sittings to watch a movie; my roommate used to watch half an hour of a movie every morning while getting ready for work.  But we're talking an 80-20 solution here.  As Pogue himself points out, Netflix doesn't even see this thing as your exclusive movie service.  The whole thing is premised upon the fact that when you want to see the latest movie (about 80% of the time), you'll get it from the mail service; when you want to see a movie now (the other 20%), you'll use the instant view service.  I really believe the splits are something similar for this 24 hour thing: 80% of the people 80% of the time will watch a movie within 1 day (especially if they have to).  It's not going to work for me the 20% of the time I want to watch a movie in more than one sitting (when I will likely use my Netflix subscription), or the 20% of the people who habitually watch their movies serially; but is that something that Unbox/TiVo needs to worry about?  Is that something that they deserve to be knocked on?  Especially when Netflix/Roku doesn't worry about it for their 80-20 solution, and doesn't get knocked for it? 

 

And again - this isn't even Unbox/TiVo's fault.  The 24 hour limit is a DRM issue, created by Hollywood lawyers.  If you can convince Hollywood that their best interests rest in allowing an expansion of that time limit - it's a relatively easy to execute.  What's the best amount of time?  Again, an 80-20 solution I think would come close to something like 36 hours.  Say I start to watch a movie at 6pm and watch it for 30 minutes.  The next morning, while eating breakfast, I watch 15 minutes.  I have a dinner I'm going to that night, so I don't get back to start watching the last 45 minutes or so until 10pm, and I still have plenty of time.  

 

Whew - as always, a lot of words.  But here's the quick and dirty.

Issue	Unbox/TiVo	Netflix/Roku
1. Download	You can use your PC or the TiVo box to select movies to rent or own	You must maintain your queue with your PC
2. Speed	Takes longer to get a big enough chunk to start watching, but you can start remotely.	20 seconds to start watching
3. Cost	$4 for rental of most titles, $16 to buy	$99 initial outlay, cost subsumed in Netflix subscription
4. DRM	24 hour	N/A
5. Quality	"Very good"; DVD-like	"TV-like" with a fast cable connection
6. Library	Old and new	Not new/garbage

 

 

If Unbox/TiVo is fatally flawed, so, too is Netflix/Roku.  Will Unbox/TiVo beat out Netflix/Roku?  Probably not, given the fact that Netflix/Roku is "free" and is supported by Netflix.  Will it survive?  Maybe not, if Netflix can catch on here in a big way.  But I think Unbox/TiVo does a really good job, and if it fails, it won't be because it wasn't as good a product. 
 

 

--
Noel Schively
 

Creative Zen Stone +

People wonder why the iPod, in its various forms and incarnations, is so popular.  And the reason is, the alternatives just aren't as user friendly.

 

A couple of months ago I decided that I was tired of pulling my iPod out of its protective sleeve to pop it in another sleeve to take to the gym.  I really only listened to a handful of albums - Modest Mouse We Were Dead... , Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom, a couple of live Jethro Tull performances....  I considered getting an iPod Shuffle, but I'm just not a "shuffle" sort of guy; I'm more of a "play the album as it was originally conceived" sort of guy.  I was really worried that, without a screen, I would be blind among my four or five albums, never sure which one I was about to listen to.  So I looked around and found a good price and a postive reviews on Creative's Zen Stone +.  It was small, it had a screen, had enough memory for me to pop my four or five albums on, and seemed perfect.  Additionally, it had an FM radio, voice recorder, and stopwatch functions - things I thought I might use, but not necessities.  Got the wristband attachment for it, figuring that would be a little easier to use in the gym than some giant armband thingy, and if I really liked it, I could wear it as a third watch....

 

Now, don't get me wrong.  The sound on the thing is really good.  Even through pretty mediocre sports headphones, the sound was surprisingly good, perhaps better than on the iPod.  The form factor is nice - small, shaped like a skipping stone or one of those little rocks you get in the faux Buddhist sand gardens (and thus very appropriate).  The screen isn't anything to write home about, but it works as a GUI and to let me know what song I'm on.  But everything else, while working okay, was sort of a disappointment. 

 

1.       It's a little on the large side to wear as a watch; not too too bad, but a little large.  But what makes it impractical to use as a watch is the fact that when the Stone+ shuts down - it shuts down.  It goes into a "deep sleep," and in order to wake it up, you need to hold the top button down for a small millenium before it switches on - and then it starts playing music, so you have to pause the music.  The top button is a sort of rocker switch - hold down on one side and you control the power, the play/pause, and the menu functions, hold down on the other side and you have a programmable hot key - which you can set to display the time.  But the thing has to be on and awake for that programmable button to work.  Then it shows the time for like 5 seconds before switching to the song display.  It will show the song display for 30 seconds, then switch back to the watch face for 30 seconds, then go black; still awake, but black.

2.       The controls don't feel intuitive to me.  I've used it several times - not steadily, I'll admit - and every time I'm fishing for stuff.  I'm turning the volume up when I want to go to the menu, for instance.  I have to go to the menu (center button once if the display is dark, then again when the display is on), tab over to Music Options (right on the ring), choose the menu (center button), down through the menu options (either right or down on the ring), center button to select.  If I want to choose an album, it goes something like - center button (to turn on the display), center button (to get to the menu), right ring (to move to Music Options), center button (to choose the Music Options menu), center button (to choose Browse Music), down/right ring to navigate through albums (stored as folders), center button to choose the album.  I guess this isn't more onerous than iPod controls, but it feels weird - Music Options, "Browse Music" to choose an album?  Things are stranger when you need to change the clock, or find an FM station, or want make a recording.  Am I pushing the rocker switch on top, or the center button?  Additionally, some menus have a "Cancel" option - which takes you all the way back to the song display, for instance.  Some don't have any way to back up at all, you just have to wait 10 seconds until the song display takes over.  There is no "back" function at all, so once you go down a path, like say the Browse Music, you can't go back, there is no cancel, you must wait 10 seconds to go back to the Song Display and start all over again - unless you choose an album....

3.       This is really annoying: there is a noticeable pause between tracks.  I have two live JT albums, which should have almost no pause between tracks.  More and more modern albums are so thematically composed, that often times songs will bleed seamlessly into one another; I'm listening to the Decemberists Picaresque right now, and it just did it - blending into "On the Bus Mall" as the last chord of "Engine Driver" resonates.  We Were Dead... does this as well.  But the Stone+ is totally incapable of doing this.  I'm not talking a slightly annoying 1 second gap, as you might have on old vinyl when songs were discrete songs.  I'm talking an unbelievably long, several second gap - long enough for you to go "WTF is going on?  Have I ripped my headphones out?  Did the battery die?  Did the album end?  WTF?"  And then the song starts.

4.       A really nice feature of the iPod is the music automatically pauses when you rip the headphones out.  I'm constantly doing this at the gym: get the cord wrapped around a piece of equipment, pull, and the ear pieces drag out of my ears, the cord rips out....  Or, more gently, in the car with the iPod plugged into the Aux port - you tug the Aux cord out and the iPod stops.  Not so with the Stone+.  But this goes beyond losing a few seconds of music when you manage to perform a de-earbudding.  With the iPod you essentially have an "If I can't hear it, the music is off" attitude - which saves an untold number of battery hours.  With the Stone+, you can be listening to some music (to the point the display has gone dark), decide to stop, detach the headphones....  and the display remains dark, but the music keeps playing, eating battery life. 

5.       The battery life isn't too good in standby mode.  This might be a function of the fact that I don't use it all the time.  But just about every time I pick it up - the battery is just about dead.  I recently had surgery, so didn't go to the gym for like a month, and so didn't have a reason to wear it.  It so drained of power that I had to reset it before it would actually take the charge.  It was weird.  Took three overnight "chargings" for me to figure this out.  Not a big thing, I guess, just ... annoying.

6.       It's a quibble, and is a problem with the fact that I had the iPod first and encoded all my CDs through iTunes, but in order to get them to play on the Stone+, I need to re-encode all of them first.  I need to do the same with the N800.  But there is proprietary Creative Zen software that I need to use in order to copy the music over; it doesn't act like a mass storage device that I can drag and drop .mp3 files onto.  I haven't yet tried with my DRM free music that I got through eMusic or Amazon to see if that will load without too many hassles.

7.       It seems really sensitive.  Twice now I've shorted out the thing with static electricity when I pulled my fleece off.  Luckily, it's nothing that a reset (via a pinhole in the back) can't take care of.  But it's a pinhole, and when you do it at the gym, you usually don't have anything small enough to reset, so no music for you.

In a sense, a lot of these are quibbles, and the constant comparison to the iPod is slightly unfair; the Stone+ is a decent enough machine.  And if this was my first DMP, these prolly wouldn't be hang ups.  I would be habituated to pausing the music before taking out the headphones, I would have encoded all my music in a more open format, I would be as used to the Creative music manager as I am to iTunes, the navigation would be second nature.  But the difference with an iPod is obvious.  The iPod just works; I have to work the Stone+. 

So all and all, not a bad machine, but not a great machine.  I'm going to continue to use it as my gym machine, but it will never be my second choice, let alone first....