Why won't my computer (Asrock ION 330) play HD netflix smoothly?

Silverlight on Atom/Win 7 has issues, as my own homebrew HTPC setup can attest. Even with 4 gig of RAM, extremely high-speed broadband and optimized browser setups, it still can't stream HD Netflix. My understanding from the Silverlight and Netflix forums is that this is not a priority issue for the Silverlight development team, and that those of us on Atom just need to upgrade our hardware. I'm now considering the Roku box as my next HTPC.

http://ask.metafilter.com/207471/Why-wont-my-computer-Asrock-ION-330-play-HD-netflix-smoothly#2990616: "mullingitover, I'm not sure it's a fair statement to claim that "Netflix on the PC just plain sucks". I have cable internet and a year old Win7 laptop and Netflix virtually always runs flawlessly. As a matter of fact, I'm amazed at the fact that I only wait a very short time at the beginning of a movie for the intitial stream to begin playing, and never have to wait once it's started." Yes, a year old laptop will have something like an i5 or i7 CPU, or a C2D running faster than 2Ghz so you'd be fine. It's when you're running a computer with a slow cpu but adequate hardware decoding where netflix sucks, even though the hardware decoding should process the HD stream without missing a beat. Also, when you run netflix HD you're seeing 40%+ cpu usage, right? It's working alright, but it kills your battery life and wastes processing power. If netflix fixed their HD streaming so PCs could handle it in the GPU, you'd be seeing ~5% CPU usage and get an extra hour out of your battery.

I poked around some more and found threads regarding Sony and WD's devices being used with Netflix.ca - both have issues, but the most recent wdtv posts were of success. The Sony threads mentioned a patch "in march" but they weren't dated with a year. It would probably be wise to contact the companies involved before purchasing. Or rebuild the HTPC with an Ivy Bridge-based processor, along the lines of the guides at AVSForums. I did notice that some canadians were using US-based VPN services to access Netflix.com (not .ca) so I guess that's a third option.

There are plenty of other devices that will stream Netflix, such as those from WD and Sony Unfortunately the international streaming restrictions are actually Netflix's not the Roku.

There are plenty of other devices that will stream Netflix, such as those from WD and Sony, for about the same price ($50-$100). And of course many "connected" blu-ray players are in the same price range.

(I did not mention: I am in Canada. From my surfing around, it seems that Roku in Canada is still a little tricky. Too bad...)

The problem is the classic symptom of a bitrate that is too high. This is only a problem if a) You can't download the video fast enough (not the problem here - and the "classic" problem) or B) your processor can't handle the stream (almost never a problem). The way internet streaming works is that the assumed bottleneck is the users download speed. Netflix does (what everyone does) and spends considerable time, money and effort trying to provide the highest bitrate stream for your connection with the underlying assumption that your processor can handle it (and it should). This is how variable bitrate streaming works. I'm not aware of a single playback mechanism which does variable bitrate stream switching based on your processing power. The fact that you have to "force" a lower bandwidth to get this to work again lays the blame at the processor. In even fewer words: Youtube-HD works, Netflix-HD doesn't work, problem=Netflix. This is a naive comparison. You're comparing two completely different video stacks YouTube is H.264 or WebM Delivered via generic MP4 to a Flash player with little or no DRM. Netflix is VC-1AP with PlayReadyDRM delivered to a Silverlight player. As a video provider Netflix's responsibility only goes so far which generally is entirely on the delivery side. Once the file (or a sufficient part thereof) gets to the machine their responsibility, for the most part, ends. At this point you hit the Silverlight part of the stack and thats what seems to be having issues. You can blame Netflix for choosing silverlight but you can't blame Netflix for providing "too high a bitrate" thats just ridiculous and counter to the way internet streaming works. To the original question Get a dedicated box like a Roku. Even though it may be less powerful than my computer - the silverlight/netflix software/content is well-tuned to make use of its GPU hardware, so it can stream netflix HD smoothly. Roku boxes have dedicated hardware video decoders (not exactly a GPU but a chip dedicated to decoding video) and are built from the ground up for streaming (in fact for streaming Netflix - originally it was just a "Netflix streaming device"). The two companies are tied at the hip and you can pretty much guarantee a smooth experience on that device. Plus they're cheap and you can stream a ton of other content as well (I love them, and my company has a few Roku channels we built)

Oh, and http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26 is where to read up on this stuff.

As I understand it, this is an issue with Silverlight not taking advantage of your capable GPU.. AMD's Fusion platform is similarly affected. Unless this is strictly limited to Win7 and you want to fool around with other OS's, Roku is your cheapest option.