MrMaddog Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Between Nintendo killing Netflix on the Wii and my own problems running any streaming app but YouTube on my Xbox 360, I was wondering if it's even worth using modern consoles for anything besides games. I'm still getting an Xbox One S for my birthday, which I still hope gets continued support, so I'm debating if I can use that as my HTPC or just get a seperate Roku stick. Anyone's thoughts....? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Netflix is a ok on the last and current gen machines. Wii U & Switch, PS3 & PS4, Xbox 360 & Xbox One should all still support decent streaming from youtube, netflix and the like for some time to come I'm assuming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Video Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Maybe you need an updated player for Netflix or whatever player you prefer. I use it on my 360 often and have no issues with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digdugnate Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 we use our xbox one for hulu, prime, netflix, and youtube- they work pretty good when we are streaming to the living room tv. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 The 360 is fine for streaming in my experience. They've turned off some apps (Verizon Fios is the main one I remember) but otherwise it's pretty well supported. Amazon and Netflix should be fine on it for a long time. You might want to get a media remote, it's a little nicer than a game controller for video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boog Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Seems like all modern consoles have a limited hardware lifespan... I think it's better to get a cheap tv stick or streaming bluray player on black friday instead of shortening your console's life with hundreds of netflix hours. tv sticks use a lot less power too, so electricity bill savings will probably recoup the $20 device cost at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Even using a blu-ray player is not a certainty. About 5 or 6 years ago we bought a decent Sony Blu-ray to use in the bedroom to watch movies on disc and to stream as it had Pandora, Netflix...etc. Well about a year later we started to have issues trying to access Netflix from it and it would give some odd error code. I tried to research it and found no resolutions but others were reporting the same. Turns out that Sony decided after a year to no longer renew the license for that model blu-ray for continued Netflix support! So basically all the companies have to pay netflix and the others for licensing to allow those devices to stream their content. I assume that if a device doesn't seem to actively be used for that purpose according to the manufactures, then they can elect to just no longer pay for continues licensing and thus the apps will just stop working. Pretty bummed by that. The really really odd thing is that we ended up replacing our main Blu-ray player a few months after this in the living room and moved that one to the bedroom. Well that blu-ray player is an even older Panasonic player that I bought at LEAST a year before the sony. It still works just fine for Netflix etc... I also have a 360 in the bedroom but after I stopped playing games on it (It has literally NOT been powered on in well over a year now), I also didn't see a need to renew my xbox live account. So obviously without that you can't access streaming services and I find that to be pretty messed up. I can at least still access netflix, Vudu and the like from my PS4 and I don't have a PSN subscription either. Just the normal free accounts and I'm not limited there. That alone is a reason I'm not a big fan of the Xbox systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper_Eye Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 It depends on the situation in that room I think. For my son it is convenient for him to access everything from his Xbox One. He plays his games, watches Youtube, Netflix, Youtube TV, Twitch, Mixer. All of those work great. It's a one stop shop for his media needs. It is wired to the network so he doesn't see a lot of buffering. The previous generation consoles are a mixed bag when it comes to this stuff. Two of the rooms I want to be able to watch streaming TV in (his room and my media room) have PS3 consoles so I decided to try out PS Vue. They SHOULD NOT advertise the PS3 as a supported device for that service. It is absolutely unusable. The interface is so agonizingly slow. The video quality is awful. The guide is useless. Changing channels freezes the thing up for ages. It's a total disaster. Watching PS Vue on Android TV and Roku was great but I don't want to buy any additional devices to have the service in those rooms. Fortunately those rooms also have Xbox One consoles and Youtube TV has an app for it. Youtube TV is just as good, if not better now that you aren't forced to watch VOD from your DVR, and $5 cheaper while supporting at least one device in each room I need it in. Some of these apps just need to be removed from the PS3 and Xbox 360. They do not provide a quality experience and I would prefer the providers be honest about their support for those consoles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 I use my Xbox One S primarily for streaming and 4K Blu-Ray. I don't play a lot of games on it. Nice thing about it as opposed to the PS4 is that it just uses regular infrared, so you can use any universal remote with it. It is, as far as I know, unique among the current gen consoles in that way. One downside to it is that if you have an HDR TV set, the Xbox One Netflix app has had a bug forever in that it displays absolutely everything in HDR, including the menus as well as content that wasn't filmed in HDR. I don't know why they don't fix this; people have been complaining about it for years. So I don't use the Xbox for Netflix; I use my TV's built-in app for that. But I do use it for HBO, Showtime, Starz, AMC, Fox and YouTube. I use my PS3 in my bedroom for streaming and movies. But I have a PS3-specific remote, since it uses Bluetooth just like the PS4. (The PS3 also has a better official remote than the PS4, and I don't have a full A/V setup in that room so its remote works fine for just the console and TV.) I don't think most people would have a reason to have a separate streaming dongle or box if you have a current or last-gen console from Sony or MS. I'm not sure about Nintendo, but I feel like the Wii U's interface would have gotten in the way and I don't think the Switch even has most streaming apps. There may be some smaller apps that Sony and MS don't have, but that might be the only reason you'd need something else. That or you have an HDR TV and an Xbox One, and your TV doesn't have its own Netflix. But that's a pretty specific case that's probably not common. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digdugnate Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 fwiw, you no longer need XBox Live to stream stuff. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 One downside to it is that if you have an HDR TV set, the Xbox One Netflix app has had a bug forever in that it displays absolutely everything in HDR, including the menus as well as content that wasn't filmed in HDR. I don't know why they don't fix this; people have been complaining about it for years. What would that look like? Not having HDR, I would guess that HDR everywhere would be a good thing, not a bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SignGuy81 Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 I use Xbox 360 and the Xbox One for streaming. I stream Netflix, Vudu, Sling, youtube, etc. Basically all my TV watching is done from either xbox unless I'm watching a local broacast channel with my Channel Master DVR+, which also has a Sling app which no longer works for it because they pulled support so now I have to use the Xbox to watch Sling in my living room unless I buy another roku which I'm not going to since I have Sling on Xbox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SignGuy81 Posted November 16, 2018 Share Posted November 16, 2018 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omegadot Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 I use a Roku because I don't really want to leave my console on all the time for streaming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 What would that look like? Not having HDR, I would guess that HDR everywhere would be a good thing, not a bug. On my TV it usually doesn't look that bad, but that's because my TV doesn't really do HDR very well anyway. But it looks weird. Everything is super-contrasty but at the same time the black level is really bad (grey-ish) because the brightness of the TV is cranked to the max. This doesn't happen with actual HDR content. Since HDR is kinda BS as it is (most TV's aren't bright enough to really do it well), I'll bet a lot of people use the Xbox Netflix app as it is and either don't notice the issue or maybe wonder why it looks a little weird but not enough to do anything about it. But there are a lot of people who have complained about it too. And since every TV I know of switches to HDR mode automatically, there's no real way for the viewer to fix it. Netflix just has to stop passing that HDR flag or whatever that tells the TV to go into that mode. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 17, 2018 Share Posted November 17, 2018 I literally just discovered that I *can* manually turn off (and on) HDR on my Sony TV, so maybe others can too. But it's kind of a pain and involves a couple sub-menus. So I wouldn't do it just to use Netflix on the Xbox One. But it did let me easily confirm what non-HDR stuff looks like in HDR, and it's nasty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted November 18, 2018 Share Posted November 18, 2018 Unless you use Linux you can't use Netflix on a PS2 anymore. They cut it off years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted November 19, 2018 Share Posted November 19, 2018 That's interesting. I didn't even know that Netflix was available on the PS2. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
power Posted November 19, 2018 Share Posted November 19, 2018 i'm so chuffed that YT is now on Switch, not having a smart tv this is now the best way to play YT on my tele. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Video Posted November 19, 2018 Share Posted November 19, 2018 I wasn't aware Netflix was on ps2 either, it wasn't on Wii till they released a disc, though I'm sure you could dl it at a later point. Granted, there's a shitload of both those consoles out there 100+million each, so it makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 19, 2018 Share Posted November 19, 2018 Sounds like Netflix on PS2 was only in Brazil, and dropped a few years ago. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.941201-The-PS2-had-Netflix-service-that-was-operational-until-recent Brazil, the alternate history place where the Sega Master System and Megadrive ruled supreme. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eltigro Posted November 19, 2018 Share Posted November 19, 2018 "Do you guys not have phones?" But seriously, I've rarely used the streaming services available on my consoles. The interface is usually clunky and searching and such is a chore (for Youtube... haven't really used the others even on other devices). Maybe if I had a keyboard that would work with them, but at that point, I'd rather just use my laptop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted November 20, 2018 Share Posted November 20, 2018 For film based services like Netflix, I use it 100% on my consoles and have done so for a long time (Wii at one point in time when I was still on a CRT, then 360 and Xbox One when I went HD). I have never had an issue with clunky interfaces or managing them with a controller. For YouTube, I'm mostly still PC, but if I am working from home I'll pop it on the main TV and it works in those situations. There are a lot of features not fleshed out (or even missing) compared to the desktop version. Twitch, I'm 50/50. I do plug a keyboard up to the Xbox One when I watch on my TV but still want to interact with the streamer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BawesomeBurf Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 I've never been a fan of streaming services or YT on consoles. I just use my PC which is hooked up to our TV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newsdee Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 I just use a Chromecast device that I control from my phone. It's simple and quick. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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