David Brown's Page

"Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is available... the fundamental story is more Christmas than Halloween... very much along the lines of Seuss's Grinch, but probably not suited to youngsters who are scared easily."

"Please post your IW technical questions in this group: http://community.netflix.com/group/iwtechsup"

"Sounds like if you can watch a movie on the PC, back out of that (to avoid licensing limitations on instant watching), and then immediately try the same movie on the PS3, that would be a very good test. I have not seen anything that bad on even the…"

"Note that LG picked a design that uses "antennas" (if you can call them such) that are merely traces on the circuit board. In my setup, they get about half the bandwidth from my router that the Roku player it was supposed to replace gets…"

"Only if the combined usage exceeds the available bandwidth. See my more detailed reply below."

"I'm probably old-fashioned, but it seems to me that a HDTV is going to survive a lot more iterations in technology than the Roku player -- or any similar capability built into the TV. Or at least they have for me... my first "TV" was…"

"I see your smiley, but indeed that message doesn't work for people using Netflix-capable devices on their TV or who simply go to their IW queue. The title list on devices and the queue would be good places to display that message."

"Sorry for your bad luck with trying this out when Netflix is having a bad night. They have put an error message on the instant watching page."

"They've got a message on the watch instantly page now: "Movies and TV shows may not currently be available to watch instantly. We’re sorry for the inconvenience." My device just says to try again. The Silverlight player gives…"

"I'd say, "maybe, but probably not." Last November, Netflix blogged some information about the bandwidth requirements for their various streams. One interesting point Mr. Hunt made was that after measuring bandwidth, the player will…"

"This isn't just a Sony thing. It sounds more like it's going to be pretty much a universal issue for HDTV owners. Only the specifics of the menu command/location to turn off overscan are specific to any model line. I suspect that far more…"

"That makes sense to me, although I'm lower on the knowledge curve on this stuff than you. I changed my settings on the TV. I'm glad you did some research and posted about this, I would never have thought that the problem was unique to Sony…"

"I think so, yes, but I also think I've proven that I'm not an expert here ;-) One contributor to that Wikipedia article wrote, "For 1080i or 1080p material only the central 1776x1000 pixels are presented to the viewer. For 720p…"

"Most certainly! But while Netflix offers a "Report Problem" button, I couldn't find the "please help me understand something subtle" button, so I thought I'd ask in the forum. It seemed to work out okay :-)"

"Occasionally, I'll see a foreign film on IW (via Roku) with the subtitles partially cut off at the bottom, which I (now) assume is the result of the pixels dropping. (It may be cutting out pixels other times, but I didn't notice it.) I…"