Cameron Stokes’s Blog

Netflix recently opened up their Watch Instantly service to external platforms such as the XBOX 360, TiVo, Roku, and others increasing their potential audience of the service to users who don’t want to sit at their computer to watch a movie or TV show.

I’ve since watched over 40 videos through the service on my 360 and after the most recent one I received an email from Netflix asking me to rate picture quality was.  The options are The quality was very good, The quality was acceptable, and The quality was unacceptable.  The survey seems simple and innocent enough but has some interesting implications behind the answers.

Determining your video quality

The quality of your video stream is determined when you first start the video and adjusts if the player notices your connection slowing.  A change in quality is fairly seamless on a computer and happens while the video streams.  If it happens, you’ll see the sharpness of the video increase and decrease as the video continues to play.  The player on the 360 has to stop the video and re-buffer the stream when changing the quality.

What makes the survey interesting is that it allows Netflix to conduct an a/b test to find the right blend between quality and cost to stream a video.  Netflix can test different levels of stream quality, say on a scale of 1-5, and then survey their customers to find the ideal quality level right between where their customers are happy and when they start to complain.  If customers complain at level 2 but say level 3 is acceptable then Netflix can stream at level 3 and no worry about the added cost of levels 4 or 5.

Netflix could take this a step further and adjust stream quality per user based on their individual feedback.  If I consistently rate videos streamed at level 4 as acceptable and level 3 as unacceptable yet another user rates level 3 as acceptable and level 2 as unacceptable, they could customize the stream quality for each of us to minimize their cost.  Again, there’s no point in streaming at a higher quality if neither of us notice.

This is the ideal case when it comes to conducting a/b testing and gathering customer feedback.  This allows Netflix to better serve their customers and also reduce their costs.  In the end, I answered the survey that the The quality was acceptable.  I’m not sure what video quality I was receiving but it was perfectly watchable and I never once thought that it didn’t look as good as it should.  At the same time, it was an older movie and not one that would be commended on its special effects or impressive scenery so I didn’t think it deserved a The quality was very good.

You can read more about how Netflix’s streaming technology works in a surprisingly detailed post on their blog titled Encoding for streaming.

Microsoft released their latest Xbox Live update today, cleverly named the New Xbox Experience (NXE). While I haven’t had a chance to take a look at all the new features I can speak to the upgrade process.

I turned on my Xbox to play some Call of Duty 4 and was greeted with the friendly update notification. As with past Xbox Live updates, Microsoft forces you to upgrade or otherwise disconnect from Xbox Live. While I can understand the technical reasons for Microsoft doing this, its frustrating when all you want to do is play a quick game before fixing dinner. In any case I chose to upgrade and after about 5 minutes of downloading the Xbox restarted. I was looking forward to getting to my game when another download launched. Seeing that this one was expected to take 15 minutes I started fixing dinner.

After this download finished, the Xbox restarted yet again. When it came back on I was presented with the new Terms & Conditions (T&C) for Xbox Live. Curious to see how long they were I becan scrolling through them, not bothering to read them. After 3 minutes of scrolling continuously through something that could rival War and Peace in length, I reached the end and clicked Accept. Had I actually read through the Terms and Conditions I would probably still be reading it now 2 hours later.

Once past the T&C I was given the option to choose my avatar and not wanting to choose one of the goobers I was offered I spent the next 10 minutes trying to put together someone that looked like me. It was truly amazing how many different hair style, color, noses, ears, chins, and clothing options that were available. I finally found a combination that I was satisfied with. This part of the process was very Nintendo Wii’ish both in the graphics and sound effects.

After my avatar, I went hunting for the feature I had been waiting for in the new release, the Netflix integration. After finding the link in the Video Marketplace, I had to agree to and start yet another download. Once that finished I had to activate my account. This was the first part of the NXE update process I was actually pleased with. The Xbox gave me an activation ID that I had to take to Netflix’s website and enter once logged into my account. I entered the ID, clicked enter, and about 2 seconds later the Xbox was updated and had my 30+ Instant Queue movies available. This process was very quick and easy.

After all this, dinner was ready and I had to give up on Call of Duty. I haven’t actually tried to watch a movie yet so I’m curious how well that will work but all in all the update process was pretty frustrating. Given it took about 45 minutes to actually get through all that, I didn’t have any time for actual gaming. Maybe tomorrow…