Samsung loads Lovefilm onto BD boxes
Stream at will
DVD rental and movie streaming service Lovefilm is to be rolled out to Samsung Blu-ray Disc players.
About time too. Samsung added the Amazon-owned firm's video-on-demand service to its internet-connectable tellies in May 2010.
There's already a Lovefilm 'app' that Samsung BD player owners can download if they've connected their machine to their home network. So far, it hasn't actually done anything.
To use the service, you need to be a Lovefilm subscriber paying £6 or more a month. Lovefilm's streaming selection isn't spectacular, but it's growing, gaining a greater proportion of films you might have heard of, or want to see, over the straight-to-video stuff. ®
COMMENTS
Bedroom TV?
I have a couple Sony BD players, one which streams LoveFilms to the 22in bedroom TV, the content looks fine. On the downstairs 40in they are no worse than SD programming off Sky. Maybe like iPlayer they test connection speed and choose the quality based on what the connection will support. Mind you, I bought the Sony players for the upscaling and networking support, it plays video from a DLNA server too, as I don't own any BluRay disks and don't really expect to ever buy any.
Image quality
If movies are streamed in the same (rubbish) quality as they are direct from the website, I can't imagine it seeing much demand.
samsung apps?
talking of which my samsung bd player has never shown any additional apps available to download beyond the few that were there from the start when i bought it around the middle of last year, yet i keep reading stuff about the samsung app store and all the apps in it. is it me or is this a general thing and the samsung app store is only getting apps for things like tablets and phones?
Haven't really missed it; didn't buy it for that, but it's bugged me that it might just be set up wrong :-) (yes it is connected to the internet, has received a few software updates since).
IPlayer
Just needs IPlayer which was advertised clearly on the box, but :( another 20 minutes updating firmware and then another 10 whilst it fafs updating the apps half of which I have never used.
Brilliant
Buy an HD capable player, and use it to stream grainy, barely-passable-as-DVD versions of films.
Plus if it's anything like the PS3 version, the interface will be hideous.
