Roku Video Quality vs. Streaming on Older Blu-ray Player

For quite some time, I’ve been watching all the usual streaming video apps (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc.) on my now approximately four-year-old Sony blu-ray player. I use an Ethernet cable connection, and have well above a good enough download speed, and indeed Netflix and Amazon look just fine in HD.

Unfortunately, Google/YouTube recently ended YouTube app support for these older Sony (and probably some other brands) devices, so I thought it was a good time to finally try out the Roku. I picked up the latest model of the Roku 3 (the 4230), and am indeed having fun being able to do YouTube again and have only just dug into what else it can do (Warner Archive Instant is one I’m trying out as well).

In any event, I’m noticing that, even though the Roku is at least four years older than my Sony BD player, and even though I’m using the same exact Ethernet cable connection on both, the HD (and SD I suppose as well) material from Netflix and Amazon looks a bit sub-par on the Roku. It’s just a bit softer in terms of picture quality. HD stuff still pretty much looks HD, just a bit less sharp. Can anyone explain this? It looks like the two devices use rather different methods for loading and buffering the material. My Sony player takes longer to buffer, but once it does, it immediately looks very sharp. The Sony player also shows me the download speed the machine is getting (usually in the 25-50 mbps range.) The Roku on the other hand loads material much quicker, but it looks really bad and then within a minute catches up and shows a much better picture, but one that at its peak is just a notch, maybe 5 to 10 percent, lower in video quality. The Roku also doesn’t offer any way to see what amount of data/download speed it is allowing through. So I don’t know how much of the disparity in video quality is the Roku simply accepting lower quality data streams (a bit of research online shows that it’s possible the Roku uses as little data as possible to keep the HD connection), versus it just being a case of the actual video output quality/video chip (or whatever it’s called) on the Roku just not being on par with the Sony BD player, even if the BD player was made in 2010 or 2011.

I’m just curious if perhaps the Roku is designed and programmed to use a *much* lighter connection speed, perhaps around the minimum 3 or 4 mbps or whatever it is, while maintaining *nearly* the same video quality. I guess it’s impressive if they can take a connection speed only 10% as fast and achieve 90% of the best video quality. But my data isn’t capped or anything, so I’d rather use a device that allows the 25-50 mbps.

I see some mentions online of a “secret” Roku menu that allows one to manually select the download speed (the Roku evidently defaults to auto-detect the correct speed). But I don’t think this would make a difference, as the screenshots of this menu I’ve seen online show a top selectable speed of like 3 or 4 mbps.

Obviously, the easy solution would be to just keep doing Netflix and Amazon on the Sony player, and use the Roku for everything else. But I do like the idea of using one box for everything.

Any thoughts?

 

There's no easy answer. My family is trained to use the TiVo Roamio to stream Netflix and Amazon Prime. If they want HBO Go, Showtime Anytime or any of the other oddball Roku channels they switch to the Roku 2XS. I renamed the inputs on my Pioneer receiver to "TiVo" and "Roku" to make it easy. I wish there was a one box solution but there isn't.

The picture/audio quality and user interfaces for Amazon and Netflix are superb on my Roamio. The convenience of streaming and a beautiful over the air DVR is worth the $10 per month I pay to TiVo.

A tip of the hat to Netflix & Amazon for upping their audio game with Dolby Digital Plus.

 

It's very likely your Blu-ray player has much better video processing hardware than the Roku device.

 

That's my guess, too. You would think that bandwidth is bandwith, and the quality would be dictated more by the connection speed than anything else. We watch Netflix streaming through a Sony Blu-ray player, and to me it looks fine. I don't watch Amazon that much, but do on rare occasions.

 

Nope, bandwidth is not bandwidth. You'll get the best Netflix from AppleTV, and the best Amazon from Firetv or Firestick

 

Huh? The device attached to the end of your internet connection cannot dictate the available bandwidth of that connection. My bet would also be the comparative quality of the video codec/processing h/w.

 

The device at the end can dictate which server or "path" the content takes to get to your house.

 

So you're saying that Netflix will preferentially provide higher bandwidth (for better quality video) to customers with an AppleTVs over everyone else?

 

Basically, yes.

That's not to say AppleTV will always be the best, rather Netflix proactively decides the quality of the video stream based on the client device. Although the financial background of these arrangements are never public, you can always conclude that "money talks". And it is easy to verify that AppleTV (or the Amazon Fire products referenced above) have the best subjective performance vs. competing devices.

The architecture behind this client-specific instructions/performance can be explored at the following links, or just search for "Netflix manifest file"


https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall14/cos561/papers/NetFlix12.pdf
https://technifyme.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/netflix-uncovered/

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Speaking of Netflix and bandwidth, Netflix accounts for 36.5% of all the North American bandwidth usage at peak hours. Comparatively, YouTube used 15.6%, simple web browsing made up 6%, Facebook consumed 2.7%, Amazon Instant Video clocked 2.0%, and Hulu snaked by with 1.9% (link).

 

I'm glad we have that straight!

 

I take it you do not agree. I find this interesting and would like more input.

 

Sam's suppositions about Netflix and other Internet streaming services giving preference to certain hardware is widely assumed. Most believe the hardware companies are paying for that privilege.

 

I'd like to see hard facts based on real bitrates. That information is not easy to get.

 

I have a Roku and a streaming-capable Blu ray player and I couldn't get streaming to work well on the BD player so I went back to the Roku. I don't know of any setting on the Roku that will increase your bitrate but you can log into your Netflix account on the website and set your Netflix account to always stream HD. I haven't done it because I'm satisfied with its performance without it.

 

I have the option of either watching using my computer browser or using my Panasonic blu-ray player. What I've noticed is Netflix looks basically the same on either, but Amazon Prime looks a little better thru the blu-ray player than the browser. My guess is that Amazon's embedded video player isn't quite as good as the one Netflix uses (though I believe both use the Silverlight plugin).