Netflix Streaming of Magnum P.I. Sucks - Technical post

[Sisophous]

I reactivated my Netflix membership last week and was automatically signed up for instant streaming which I did not want. I canceled the streaming feature and yet was given one month free of streaming since my membership had already started. Don't ask me why I got it for free. The cancellation of the streaming goes into effect at the end of the month. So, I figure to try the streaming and this is what I found, my observations and then a question please.

For some time, I have watched Magnum P.I. on disk rentals from Netflix and it is a world of difference from the streaming from Netflix. When I play a disc on my DVD player, I upconvert the signal on my HDMI hookup going from the player to the TV and it produces a near high definition 720p video, Full Screen.

When I tried the streaming on Netflix, the picture quality is standard definition, looks no better than a television quality resolution from the 80s and to my strong dislike, I lose about 1/3 of the picture screen with vertical black space on both sides of the screen. I viewed this on a HD television with an Internet connection, I do not like viewing streaming on my computer monitor although with that I can get a full screen video.

Frankly, I do not enjoy viewing this streaming if this is what I will always get on my television.

My question, is there someway I can get a better picture quality using the streaming on a HD television and is there a way to get a full screen video using the streaming?

The HD television I took these images is a 32 inch high definition 1080p Sony set and you can see the reduced video screen size.

Also to point out, my Internet connection is about as fast as you can get, both of my TVs are 1080p sets and I can view full high definition watching other films on this same set using the streaming but for some reason the Magnum P.I. episodes have inferior video quality and I do not enjoy viewing it.

Any thoughts?

These images are from Season Four, Home from the Sea and you can see the reduced video screen using the streaming. I want a full screen video but thus far can't get it with Magnum P.I. episodes. The Zoom button does not increase the video screen size, I maxed it out with what you see here.

Thanks for any feedback.

[Sisophous]

I'm surprised no feedback after a week has passed. What I chose to do, I am again renting the discs from Netflix. I wanted to start with Season 1 but that is the only season that discs are not available from Netlix. Today, I should get disc 1 of Season 2 with Billy Joe Bob, the hot headed Texan, one of the better episodes.

At some point I will just purchase the disks, likely seasons 1-4. With a series as great as Magnum P.I., the episodes should be viewed in as high quality as possible if we can do so. The streaming is beyond bad, I look forward to viewing this again.

[Doc Ibold]

I'm surprised no feedback after a week has passed. What I chose to do, I am again renting the discs from Netflix. I wanted to start with Season 1 but that is the only season that discs are not available from Netlix. Today, I should get disc 1 of Season 2 with Billy Joe Bob, the hot headed Texan, one of the better episodes.

At some point I will just purchase the disks, likely seasons 1-4. With a series as great as Magnum P.I., the episodes should be viewed in as high quality as possible if we can do so. The streaming is beyond bad, I look forward to viewing this again.

Not sure there's anything we CAN do save for say "That stinks?". It's also an 80s non Blu-ray TV show, so there's only so much one can do resolution wise. Agree that the boxes are annoying, but I think Netflix is pushing the streaming route to lose the overhead from the CDs.

Your best bet is to get the DVDs if you watch them enough.

[J.J. Walters]

Can you stream other older TV shows in full screen HD in Netflix? What do you see when you fire up Columbo or Rockford?

[Sisophous]

Can you stream other older TV shows in full screen HD in Netflix? What do you see when you fire up Columbo or Rockford?

Interesting what I found. Picture quality is far sharper on both of these shows and what is strange is they are from the 70s while Magnum P.I. is from the 80s.

You still lose 1/3 of the screen but the video is high definition, closer to 720p than 1080p but definitely in high definition if you exclude that it is not full screen.

I'm thinking the original source taken for Magnum P.I. and used for streaming was not of high quality or the person who added Magnum P.I. to Netflix did not install it properly to get the best definition picture. Why else would Columbo and the Rockford Files have such a sharper picture than Magnum P.I.? These pics are from the Rockford Files and Columbo.

I'm still not sure if there is a way to make this into a full screen which is the reason I posted this thread. Perhaps what you see is just what you get. The last image shows just how sharp it is. I did not see anything close to this sharpness on any Magnum P.I. episode I streamed.

[Reef monkey]

I dunno, I find something nostalgic about watching the show at the quality I would have watched it at back in the day. Personally, I am not a huge fan of HD, especially for shows and feature films not originally filmed to be viewed in HD. A director and a cinematographer plan their shots, the lighting, lenses, filters, etc., to achieve a certain look given a certain format (viewing screen aspect ratio, 24 frames a second, resolution, etc). When you try to retroactively convert that, a lot of the director's artistic vision for the show is lost, and I find that a lot of shows and movies end up looking "too real", so real they look fake, actually a lot of times take on the visual appearance of daytime soap operas (which I have always hated, and which are shot at 30 to 60 frames a second) and lose a lot of their cinematic quality. Turning off motion enhancement settings can sometimes help, but not always, and not completely.

The black bars on the side don't bother me at all, just as letterbox never bothered me, but pan and scan always did.

[Sisophous]

Personally, I am not a huge fan of HD, especially for shows and feature films not originally filmed to be viewed in HD.

I felt exactly like you for a few years until I became accustomed to, and spoiled with the high definition that I now crave it. At first I thought it was a marketing ploy but the viewing pleasure is heightened to a level unlike anything I enjoyed years ago.

Watching sports on high definition is a must. And, the reason why I like it so much while watching older programs is the picture is so crystal clear it is like going back in a time warp and actually being there while it is shot. A high definition picture can take us back in time and make a 40 year old film feel like it was just shot.

No right or wrong to this, it is just a personal preference.

I'm right now watching Billy Joe Bob from Season 2 and viewing the DVD with the HDMI cable hookup as I mentioned earlier, upconverts the picture to high def and I love it. The picture just floors me. This is a 1080p, 23 inch set.



This above image is from Billy Joe Bob on DVD using the HDMI cable hookup.

[Reef monkey]

I think you nailed it, it is a matter of personal preference, and people "getting used to it" - ie, our eyes have been trained to be used to the old visual experience, they will have to be trained to the new visual experience, directors will start shooting for that style and frame rate (some have already, although the fanboys skewered Peter Jackson for doing it for The Hobbit) and younger generations will grow up with it and if they ever see older stuff, they will think the older stuff is what looks weird. But as for me, at the ripe old age of 37, (as well as being a big fan of classic cinema which is 24 fps, and NOT a sports fan, where higher frame speed is definitely a plus) I say to HD and 30-60 fps - "GET OFF MY LAWN!!!"

However, I do think there is something wrong with displaying a visual artistic work in such a manner that it no longer looks as the artist intended it to.

[J.J. Walters]

You know Sisophous, the MPI box set is coming out in October. You could get all eight seasons of Magnum for $150 and never have to worry about watching "streaming Magnum" again.

[Sisophous]

You know Sisophous, the MPI box set is coming out in October. You could get all eight seasons of Magnum for $150 and never have to worry about watching "streaming Magnum" again.

Do you know the difference between this box set for all 8 seasons and the seasons sold individually? Is the quality any better for this new release? Are they single sided DVDs in the box set? I heard some complaints about the double sided disks before which were earlier releases.

On this below thread link, from almost a year and a half ago, a couple of people posted that Best Buy and Amazon were selling each season for $10. I would think if all seasons were released in a single boxed set the overall price would be lower but it is not.

https://magnum-mania.com/~magnumma/Foru ... 09befce45d

[Reef monkey]

You know Sisophous, the MPI box set is coming out in October. You could get all eight seasons of Magnum for $150 and never have to worry about watching "streaming Magnum" again.

Do you know the difference between this box set for all 8 seasons and the seasons sold individually? Is the quality any better for this new release? Are they single sided DVDs in the box set? I heard some complaints about the double sided disks before which were earlier releases.

On this below thread link, from almost a year and a half ago, a couple of people posted that Best Buy and Amazon were selling each season for $10. I would think if all seasons were released in a single boxed set the overall price would be lower but it is not.

https://magnum-mania.com/~magnumma/Foru ... 09befce45d

The only trouble I had with the double-sided DVDs was when I tried to play them in a portable DVD player that I think was not the best quality. But on my decent quality player at home, they played fine. Well, that, and the tiny white lettering on the little colored ring at the center of the disk that tells you what disk it is, is impossible to read without a magnifying glass. So I have Quantum Leap DVDs and Magnum DVDs all mixed together, I am pretty sure.

[Sisophous]

the tiny white lettering on the little colored ring at the center of the disk that tells you what disk it is, is impossible to read without a magnifying glass.

That's good to know. Some rental DVDs I get from Netflix (Not MPI) are double sided and it is a struggle to read the title the print is so fine. Typically, the double sided DVDs are used to air the same title but either in Full Screen or Wide Screen frame.

[mikeaz123]

Magnum and pretty much every show pre 00's were filmed in the 4x3 aspect ratio. If you look at a show like Breaking Bad, that is 16x9 aspect ratio, the size of a modern HDTV. Netflix only has SD masters for magnum; they look no better than the DVD's. HD 1K transfers were apparently made for the german market and are available on usenet newsgroups and looking STUNNING in true HD (still 4x3 aspect ratio, which is the correct way it was filmed).

The black bars are normal on the side of the screen, so it preserves the AR (aspect ratio). When you stretch it to fill the screen, which a lot of people seem to do, everything gets skinnier and squished, as you can see in the sisophous photos. I prefer to watch it the correct way, but to each their own....

Some tv shows are apparently going under HD restorations for Bluray or HDTV airings. Seinfeld is available in HD in 1:78 AR, which fills the HDTV screen. They achieved this by cropping the top and bottom of the screen, but also by doing that, you gain a little information on the sides of the screen that were never seen before. It would be interesting if Magnum ever goes this route, I know Universal HD airs Charlies Angels and TJ hooker in cropped versions, but I don't know if they gain info on the sides like Seinfeld does.

For an example on Seinfeld, here's a link with screen captures about halfway down the page


http://www.avsforum.com/t/1063659/seinf ... -tbs-hd/30

[J.J. Walters]

Do you know the difference between this box set for all 8 seasons and the seasons sold individually? Is the quality any better for this new release? Are they single sided DVDs in the box set? I heard some complaints about the double sided disks before which were earlier releases.

On this below thread link, from almost a year and a half ago, a couple of people posted that Best Buy and Amazon were selling each season for $10. I would think if all seasons were released in a single boxed set the overall price would be lower but it is not.

https://magnum-mania.com/~magnumma/Foru ... 09befce45d

The Complete Series box set will have all single-sided DVDs. This is an improvement over the Seasons 1-4 DVDs, which were originally released on problematic double-sided DVDs. And that's really the only difference. The box set doesn't have any new bonus content. It doesn't even have a new cover (they recycled the cover from the Season 7 DVD).

I was wrong about the Amazon price; they have it at $118 pre-order ($14 per season). Pretty good deal if you don't already have the DVDs.

[Sisophous]

I was wrong about the Amazon price; they have it at $118 pre-order ($14 per season). Pretty good deal if you don't already have the DVDs.

Talk on this forum about High Definition on ITV4 and some German releases makes me wonder how it compares to the DVD's sold in the States? My thought is using an HDMI hookup and playing DVDs is near high definition but frankly don't know if it is as high quality a picture as ITV4 or some German releases.

Some of the DVD copies of Magnum I've viewed from Netflix are far sharper than others but that may be a case of wear and tear of the copies.

If anyone knows more about MPI high definition DVD releases I'd like to know. With my luck as soon as I purchase a boxed set at Amazon, a superior quality Blu-ray release will hit the market the next day.

At some point, MPI will be made into Blu-ray, yet when, I have no idea.