

Inside the labs where Netflix is trying to make televisions suck less - tangled
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/21/8635587/inside-the-netflix-tv-testing-labs

======
ufmace
I really like that somebody is paying attention to the user experience of
these things instead of focusing on pointless spec wars. Those 3 second lags
all over the place are subtly annoying every time. I'd much rather the
manufacturers fix that then do more resolution bumps that I don't have the
bandwidth to get or the screen size to notice, on the 3 shows that actually
use it, 2 of which I'm not particularly interested in anyways

~~~
dgreensp
Exactly. The TV makers seem rudderless and out-of-touch, so they should be
thrilled Netflix is providing a roadmap to a better product.

------
joezydeco
Why does the article make a big deal about the faraday cage but not explain
_why_ it's being used? Is the rest of the office too noisy and they want to
test TVs with a single wifi configuration?

~~~
weaksauce
They want to take the other variables out of the equation and test each with
two different speeds of networks. Without an isolation you wouldn't be able to
test the speed of the device with any meaningful accuracy. (One test could
have happened when the wifi was interfering with another network that was
streaming a bunch of video while another test could have been while she office
was at lunch. I've had troublesome network interference when the microwave or
a wireless phone was in use. Source: did network installs for clients when
wifi was brand new and harder to setup reliably)

------
tzs
What, if any, are the bad consequences of instant on for TVs?

Do they have to sleep less deeply than current TVs, consuming more standby
power?

Will they be emitting more RFI in standby? My several year old Samsung gives
off quite a bit of junk in the 2m, 1.25m and 70cm ham bands when on. That
almost all goes away in standby. I'd be displeased if I got a new TV, and it
gave off that interference when "off" for the sake of turning on instantly
instead of in 10-20 seconds.

------
cwyers
Am I the only person who thinks televisions don't suck? This all seems to be
about smart TV functionality, which strikes me as superfluous anyway. I would
rather buy a TV based on stuff like picture quality and size and buy something
to plug into the TV for media consumption.

~~~
narrowrail
>buy something to plug into the TV for media consumption.

That sounds like a monitor, which is the thought process I followed until 24"
monitors were cheaply available (i.e. 2010). One still can't buy a 50"
monitor, however.

LG seems to be making 'dumb' TV's, and I found a 55" one for $700 on Amazon
(search for 55LF6000).

------
logn
Maybe this team could focus on the Netflix software itself on TVs. They
recently removed the ability to view all movies in a genre and totally removed
all sub-genres. The main reason I bought my TV was for Netflix so now I don't
have much use for it or their service.

------
rachelbythebay
I hope that's a good cage, since they posted a picture of the wifi passwords
for a pair of networks inside of it.

~~~
blahedo
...which was "device@1234", so if it's exposed they have problems other than
posting it to the net.

