newbie ?

[BigFatRatt]

Been using gbpvr a while now (been working pefectly for close to year - so I have to fool with it now) please forgive these questions.

Does this plugin stream the video from netflix?
How long do the downloaded files last?

If there is a place I can get this info sorry - point me there

Thanks

[whurlston]

Does this plugin stream the video from netflix?

The video is not exactly streamed. I found out that the Netflix player actually downloaded the movie to a temp file and played it from there so I emulated that behavior. The only thing the plugin does differently is that it does not delete the file when playback is finished. This way, you can download a movie tonight, watch it tomorrow and delete it at your convenience.

How long do the downloaded files last?

The movies stay on the drive until you delete them. They will connect to netflix.com to get the DRM key each time you play them. I have had downloaded movies that are no longer available from Netflix but they still grant playback on the file. There may come a time when they deny playback but I haven't seen it yet.

[wmguy]

My question is whether I will always be downloading the same movie no matter what speed I download at, or will NetFlix deliver a lower-quality video to me if I am on a slower connection? I only have a 768k internet connection, and want to make sure I would still be able to download full-quality movies if I am using this plugin (albeit at a slower pace than I would prefer).

I ask this because I seem to have seen that the Roku set-top-box requires a 1.5 Mbit connection, but it recommends a 3Mbit or faster connection for the best picture quality. I didn't know if NetFlix's PC service worked the same way, or if it always downloads a constant quality video file.

[whurlston]

My question is whether I will always be downloading the same movie no matter what speed I download at, or will NetFlix deliver a lower-quality video to me if I am on a slower connection? I only have a 768k internet connection, and want to make sure I would still be able to download full-quality movies if I am using this plugin (albeit at a slower pace than I would prefer).

I ask this because I seem to have seen that the Roku set-top-box requires a 1.5 Mbit connection, but it recommends a 3Mbit or faster connection for the best picture quality. I didn't know if NetFlix's PC service worked the same way, or if it always downloads a constant quality video file.

The PC viewer on the Netflix website works the same way but I override it in the plugin. In the plugin's config, you can set the default bitrate that you want (I default it to the highest quality) and it will always download that bitrate. Should that bitrate not be available for some reason (other than network speed), the plugin will download the next highest bitrate available. So basically, with this plugin, you can download the the 3Mbps stream on a dialup connection if you wanted to do so.