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Yeah, I wouldn't take anything in An Idiot Abroad at face value. Obviously there are a lot of unscripted moments (probably not as many as they want you to think, but that's just TV for you) but the stuff between Ricky and Karl is obviously them playing to the characterizations they established on The Ricky Gervais Show. They're still "playing" themselves, but with their ids allowed to run rampant.
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Jan 28, 2014 03:02
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Edible Hat posted:Is there a reason why the picture quality when I use Netflix is consistently awful? I use Hulu Plus and the picture is always crisp, yet I have heard anecdotally that most people experience the opposite (Netflix video being of good quality and Hulu being substandard.) I'm having the same problem; are you with Comcast? I've always just thought that it could be throttling by my ISP to sell their awful streaming service which they try to sell to me one a week in the mail and every time I call them with an issue.
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Jan 28, 2014 05:53
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Slimy Hog posted:I'm having the same problem; are you with Comcast? I've always just thought that it could be throttling by my ISP to sell their awful streaming service which they try to sell to me one a week in the mail and every time I call them with an issue. I use Comcast. It was really high quality for me until the Steam Winter Sale, then quality was garbage for a while and now it's fine again. I'm thinking the fact that I did a ton of downloading that month was the culprit. We're upgrading out package later this week, so we'll see if maybe the restrictions on the 50 meg tier is a bit more forgiving, since it the marketing outright states it's for streaming and large downloads. This is Comcast we're talking about, so probably not.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:09
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OldSenileGuy posted:Let's keep the D&D poo poo to D&D. But I don't think any of the D&D movies are on Netflix!
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Jan 28, 2014 06:13
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mysterious frankie posted:I use Comcast. It was really high quality for me until the Steam Winter Sale, then quality was garbage for a while and now it's fine again. I'm thinking the fact that I did a ton of downloading that month was the culprit. We're upgrading out package later this week, so we'll see if maybe the restrictions on the 50 meg tier is a bit more forgiving, since it the marketing outright states it's for streaming and large downloads. I have Time Warner Cable and I miss Comcast so loving much.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:16
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Slimy Hog posted:I'm having the same problem; are you with Comcast? I've always just thought that it could be throttling by my ISP to sell their awful streaming service which they try to sell to me one a week in the mail and every time I call them with an issue. I'm having the same problem. Netflix hardly loads, sometimes taking a minute to load a show at 2-star quality while the amazon prime service will load the same video in HD in seconds. I was thinking Comcast was throttling Netflix too, but apparently they had to voluntarily submit to basic net neutrality regulations for something like 11 years for their deal to buy NBC/Universal to go through.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:35
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mysterious frankie posted:I use Comcast. It was really high quality for me until the Steam Winter Sale, then quality was garbage for a while and now it's fine again. I'm thinking the fact that I did a ton of downloading that month was the culprit. We're upgrading out package later this week, so we'll see if maybe the restrictions on the 50 meg tier is a bit more forgiving, since it the marketing outright states it's for streaming and large downloads. I'm on the 50 meg tier and I've mentioned a couple of times about how I rarely get anything above 480p and most of the time during normal hours, it'll float back and fourth between 240 and 384. It sucks so much. I figure they're actively throttling now- if you read around, people are calling comcast and complaining about netflix speed issues and their scripted response is something along the lines of "Comcast doesn't support netflix".
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Jan 28, 2014 06:37
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Chichevache posted:I have Time Warner Cable and I miss Comcast so loving much. I have no experience with them, outside of some crappy net connections in our Texas offices, so I dunno how bad they are for home users (business class sucked, so I assume it sucks even worse for you?) I've had RCN and Comcast and they've both seemed the same to me. I'm sure they both have traffic shaping up the rear end; I'm curious if they're a little more lenient on people who throw more money at them.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:38
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Lincoln`s Wax posted:I'm on the 50 meg tier and I've mentioned a couple of times about how I rarely get anything above 480p and most of the time during normal hours, it'll float back and fourth between 240 and 384. It sucks so much. I figure they're actively throttling now- if you read around, people are calling comcast and complaining about netflix speed issues and their scripted response is something along the lines of "Comcast doesn't support netflix". Ugh, ok then. EDIT: It was plain nasty during December. I mean, it looked like streaming off of winamp circa 2004 bad. Sometime after the new billing cycle it bumped up to what looks like 720 to my untrained eye. Are you in a major market? Also, I wonder what sort of effect having a business account would have? A coworker convinced them he ran a business out of his house and they gave him one. He claimed they never throttled anything. That could have just been bragging on his part. mysterious frankie fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 06:39
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Get Verizon FiOS you poor, poor bastards  I always get what I think is the highest quality they have. Which I would guess is about a 720p video. Maybe I'm wrong and missing out on super HD and don't even know it though.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:48
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Guess who's getting rural gigabit fiber this year? I'm on Time Warner for now. No real complaints, I don't try for HD but it's not too bad.
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Jan 28, 2014 06:48
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Slimy Hog posted:I'm having the same problem; are you with Comcast? I've always just thought that it could be throttling by my ISP to sell their awful streaming service which they try to sell to me one a week in the mail and every time I call them with an issue. Actually, yes, I do have Comcast.
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Jan 28, 2014 07:09
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You can try forcing a higher buffer rate by holding shift and alt and then left-clicking the screen to access advanced options. Might not do much if your ISP is throttling you though.
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Jan 28, 2014 07:09
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drunken officeparty posted:Get Verizon FiOS you poor, poor bastards There's some sort of exclusivity arrangement where I live. I'm stuck with Time Warner or AT&T, but I can see houses from my window that can get Verizon. That's so frustrating.
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Jan 28, 2014 07:58
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Why is the desktop version of Netflix limited to 64kbps stereo audio? It sounds worse than a 700MB DVD-rip from 10 years ago.
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Jan 28, 2014 09:51
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Aumuller posted:I know there was some discussion about Twin Peaks a while ago, but I can't find it again.. Can you recommend some good movies with a similar feeling to them, or just surreal movies or movies with a kind of magic realism? Not many are available for streaming, but David Lynch, Luis Bunuel, and Ingmar Bergman movies are all recommended. Bunuel's Tristana is on streaming but it's one of the few of his I haven't seen so idk if it fits or not. I wouldn't be surprised if it does, though. Woman in the Dunes is also good (not on streaming). Ditto The Double Life of Veronique. For films that are available for streaming, you could try Certified Copy maybe, or The Turin Horse e: For the Comcast discussion, I'm on their 50/12 service and during primetime (say, 6 PM to 9:30 PM local time) it's simply abysmal. If I try to force higher quality in the player about half the time it just ends up being a buffer-fest. When I watch outside of those hours it plays in highest quality no problem, and speedtests during primetime hours show results right at my max speed. So my guess is Comcast throttles Netflix specifically during peak hours of usage to try and keep bandwidth available for everyone watching video. regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 18:49
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I think my horrible Comcast streaming problems were due to using a custom DNS provider, which messes up which content server Netflix tries to stream from (since the DNS server might not be close to where you live). I switched back to the default Comcast DNS and I haven't seen any problems since. If you're using OpenDNS / Google DNS / some random 1337 DNS from an obsolete default list in a DNS benchmarking program *cough* you might want to try going back to the boring ISP default to see if things get better.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:11
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regulargonzalez posted:Not many are available for streaming, but David Lynch, Luis Bunuel, and Ingmar Bergman movies are all recommended. Bunuel's Tristana is on streaming but it's one of the few of his I haven't seen so idk if it fits or not. I wouldn't be surprised if it does, though. Woman in the Dunes is also good (not on streaming). Ditto The Double Life of Veronique. For films that are available for streaming, you could try Certified Copy maybe, or The Turin Horse Woman in the Dunes is one of the best movies I've seen in my life. I highly recommend it if you can find it.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:48
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Chichevache posted:Woman in the Dunes is one of the best movies I've seen in my life. I highly recommend it if you can find it. It's only on iTunes, near as I can tell.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:54
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Sarchasm posted:It's only on iTunes, near as I can tell. The whole movie is up on YouTube right now as well. I don't know if it is kosher to link to it.
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Jan 28, 2014 20:35
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I've been loving An Idiot Abroad. I totally get the hate for Gervais but I imagine a lot of that is intentional on their part, like some have said. To make a wrestling analogy, Gervais is a world-class heel, in that he is fantastic at making you want to see Karl rise and overcome--even though you're not entirely sure you like Karl.
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Jan 28, 2014 23:45
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Captain Magic posted:I've been loving An Idiot Abroad. I totally get the hate for Gervais but I imagine a lot of that is intentional on their part, like some have said. To make a wrestling analogy, Gervais is a world-class heel, in that he is fantastic at making you want to see Karl rise and overcome--even though you're not entirely sure you like Karl. No it's definitely just Ricky Gervais being Ricky Gervais. He's like that all the time.
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Jan 28, 2014 23:58
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Gah! Why is Time Out in 4:3 aspect ratio? I thought Netflix had addressed their tendency of having cropped movies.
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Jan 29, 2014 00:39
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drunken officeparty posted:No it's definitely just Ricky Gervais being Ricky Gervais. He's like that all the time. For all the hate here on Ricky, I think Stephen Merchant (as charming as he is) is just as big of dick to Karl too.
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Jan 29, 2014 01:00
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Khorne Flakes posted:For all the hate here on Ricky, I think Stephen Merchant (as charming as he is) is just as big of dick to Karl too.
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Jan 29, 2014 01:31
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Aumuller posted:I know there was some discussion about Twin Peaks a while ago, but I can't find it again.. Can you recommend some good movies with a similar feeling to them, or just surreal movies or movies with a kind of magic realism? Not on Netflix but River's edge for nihilistic teenagers and The Hidden for more Kyle.
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Jan 29, 2014 01:54
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OK, so I've been frustrated with Netflix looking pretty lousy. On two separate computers, trying to force a high buffer rate reveals a maximum option of 560. Two Windows 8 machines, different browsers, different movies. What's the deal? Ninja edit: Is it Comcast?
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Jan 29, 2014 02:06
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Manky posted:OK, so I've been frustrated with Netflix looking pretty lousy. On two separate computers, trying to force a high buffer rate reveals a maximum option of 560. Two Windows 8 machines, different browsers, different movies. What's the deal? Been having this same issue, also Comcast and Windows 8. I honestly think it's Comcast, I have issues with Comcast when it comes to everything from playing games to downloading stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix is another unfortunate victim of their incompetence.
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Jan 29, 2014 02:18
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Try playing title 'Example Short 23.976' and it'll give you an idea of your average bitrate and resolution at the time you run it. It may also depress you. You might also want to hot mute. It's probably just Comcast throttling certain kinds of traffic during peak hours. Right now the best I can do is 640x480, but I bet if I ran this again at, say, 11am tomorrow I could hit 1080.
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Jan 29, 2014 02:27
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When I watch on my computer, my picture quality will flucuate, but when I watch on my PS3, everything is always SuperHD, all the time. Don't PC's not even get the option for SuperHD? It's really weird.
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Jan 29, 2014 04:59
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mysterious frankie posted:Try playing title 'Example Short 23.976' and it'll give you an idea of your average bitrate and resolution at the time you run it. It may also depress you. You might also want to hot mute. It's probably just Comcast throttling certain kinds of traffic during peak hours. Right now the best I can do is 640x480, but I bet if I ran this again at, say, 11am tomorrow I could hit 1080. Thing is, I can watch Netflix on my Roku and get low-mid quality with several minutes waiting, then jump right over to Amazon Prime and immediately get HD with just a few seconds of loading. It's not time dependent.
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Jan 29, 2014 06:31
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mysterious frankie posted:Try playing title 'Example Short 23.976' and it'll give you an idea of your average bitrate and resolution at the time you run it. It may also depress you. You might also want to hot mute. It's probably just Comcast throttling certain kinds of traffic during peak hours. Right now the best I can do is 640x480, but I bet if I ran this again at, say, 11am tomorrow I could hit 1080. It actually tells you your streaming speed?
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Jan 29, 2014 06:45
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:It actually tells you your streaming speed? Every different quality level has the bitrate and resolution baked in to the encoded video, so you can see which version it decided to stream to you.
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Jan 29, 2014 10:02
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I thought Americans and stuff get connections labeled as 20 or 50mbit or even higher whatever, you're telling me that some of you are struggling to hit even SD resolutions? The heck? I have a 3.5mbit connection and can watch in 720p any time of the day.
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Jan 29, 2014 10:43
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cat doter posted:I thought Americans and stuff get connections labeled as 20 or 50mbit or even higher whatever, you're telling me that some of you are struggling to hit even SD resolutions? The heck? I have a 3.5mbit connection and can watch in 720p any time of the day. Traffic shaping and peering disputes are a thing. I have 50mbit from TWC and while I've never had a problem with Netflix's bandwidth I can't watch Youtube or Twitch at 720p without doing this.
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Jan 29, 2014 11:57
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I'm not sure if I'm allowed to advertise this in here, but I thought I'd be remiss not to try. I've got some 12-Month Netflix codes from a past Sony promotion (https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/43114) and am offering them at half price in the SA-Market in case anybody's interested. Netflix 1-Year Subscriptions
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Jan 29, 2014 13:01
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My main takeaway from Mitt is that, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew all along that he wasn't going to win. The whole family knew, and yet they go along for the second campaign.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:19
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cat doter posted:I thought Americans and stuff get connections labeled as 20 or 50mbit or even higher whatever, you're telling me that some of you are struggling to hit even SD resolutions? The heck? I have a 3.5mbit connection and can watch in 720p any time of the day. It is always funny when foreigners realize that America actually kind of sucks at a lot of things.  Like telling children Santa isn't real.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:21
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Baron von Eevl posted:Thing is, I can watch Netflix on my Roku and get low-mid quality with several minutes waiting, then jump right over to Amazon Prime and immediately get HD with just a few seconds of loading. It's not time dependent. Same. My Prime streaming speed on my blu ray player can go anywhere up to 20 meg/second, but Netflix struggles to hit and maintain a meg. It's aggravating, because I don't really watch Prime for much more than No Reservations reruns. It is time dependent though, at least on my end. Just ran the test video again, from my home, and it streams at a solid 1080p. This is just me poking around the net, but apparently Netflix recently moved to a new CDN and, if Comcast has lovely connections to it, it's going to negatively impact streaming quality during peak hours or just altogether, in markets that reach Netflix through those connections. If that's the case we gotta wait it out, take off work to watch movies at 10am if you're like me, or just learn to enjoy our television and film at breathtaking "I just downloaded this from Kazaa in 2004" levels.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:16
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Steve Yun posted:My main takeaway from Mitt is that, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew all along that he wasn't going to win. The whole family knew, and yet they go along for the second campaign. If that's true then their reactions on election day as the results are coming in are pretty odd. In the very first scene of the movie you learn that Romney was so certain of his victory he didn't even have Obama's contact information information so that he could concede. He even says the phrase, "I hadn't even thought of that." That was probably the biggest shock for me across the whole movie. Anyone who followed the election from a non-lovely news source knew that Romney's chances were bad, it's unfathomable to me that one of the actual candidates was buying into the cable news bullshit. It's a stunning moment of head-in-the-sand wishful thinking.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:23
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