LG Marries Blu-ray and Netflix Streaming
Posted by Dave Cowl
closeAuthor: Dave Cowl
Name: Dave Cowl
Email: dave@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.blu-raystats.com
About: Originally from New Zealand, Dave now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Dave's day job
involves developing high resolution LCoS projectors.
Dave also has a strong interest in cinema and film making, and has
always been an early adopter - he still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 DVD
Player and also owns first generation Blu-ray, HD DVD and DTheater
D-VHS equipment.
Dave has been following the HD Disc format war since the beginning,
which resulted in the Blu-ray Statistics and HD DVD Statistics
websites, designed to track the studio progress with features as they
have released HD media product.See Authors Posts (350) on July 31, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Downloads, Format War, Netflix Streaming, Rental
Apparently you won’t have to choose between a Blu-ray player and a Netflix streaming player in the fall – you can have both in one device.
TWICE is reporting that the new LG BD300 Blu-ray player will also be able to stream standard definition movies from Netflix.
The player will be the second set-top device compatible with Netflix streaming. The first was a $99 Roku dedicated player.
The LG BD300 will also be a capable Blu-ray player with 1080p output as well as Bonus View and BD Live support.
The player will also scale DVDs and downloads up to 1080p.
Related posts:
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- Roku NetFlix Box Debuts, Jaws Drop
- TiVo Joins the Netflix Streaming Club
- Best Buy Shows Off Samsung BD-P2550 Netflix Streaming
You can also get an HTPC that does a whole lot more for “under $500.”
Netflix streaming is a cool feature, though.
Still, Blu-ray stand-alone players are way too expensive. They need to drop below $200.
Streaming of standard-def movies from Netflix. What a great feature.
I can’t remember, does the Roku box support (future) streaming of HD content? I seem to remember HDMI being present on the original press release.
Could the LG player, in theory, be upgraded @ a later date to stream HD content?
@Ryan –
The Roku is unable to stream HD content, the only player that will be capable is the Xbox 360.
On pen and paper it should have the hardware to playback at least 720p content via streaming so it is definitely a possibility, then again couldn’t the combo Blu Ray/HD DVD players just receive a update to support profile 2.0 at least partially?
@Ryan
The Roku box has nearly every video output to date. I believe — not positive — that it comes with composite, component, hdmi, and perhaps even s-video.
That said, I can’t imagine why they’d be putting HDMI or Component jacks — as opposed to dropping them and the price of the box — if they didn’t at least hope to provide streaming of 720p content in the future.
Bear in mind, there is no official word from Roku with regard to HD streaming, but rest assured, we’ll keep you in the know.
The Roku box only has 64MB of RAM which is why I doubt it can handle any sort of HD content.
Why do you think 64 MB is not enough to do HD?
@Dave Cowl –
Well it probably can but not at very good quality, I was applying playback with streaming, my bad.