Friday 12 November 2010

Mubi vs LoveFilm


Two new movie streaming services launch on the PS3 within a week of each other! But which one is best?!...
Actually I've only tried LoveFilm - I'm already a subscriber to their snail-mail service and on one of their cheapskate packages I'm entitled to 4 hours a month apparently. So that should get me 2 movies, or 1 and a half longer ones.

The interface is quite slick in it's iplayer-esque look-and-feel and there are thousands of movies online to choose from apparently. First problem for me is that the official PS3 bluetooth remote isn't supported properly. Argh it's like VidZone's first year all over again! I.e. play, pause, and the other main buttons on the remote aren't actually mapped to anything at all and you'll have to make do with pressing the little tiny ones, with the head of a match / broom for a mouse. If you stop watching a movie half way through and want to come back to it later then you can do so but you have to go searching for it again rather than seeing it on the front page or on a recent items menu for example. Skipping back and forward through a movie is fiddly and inaccurate. Well I guess that's one of the drawbacks of streamed content. So it's a very basic interface in need of some improvements.

Onto the more important stuff - the picture and sound quality. LoveFilm boast that the online movies have "near-DVD quality". Hmm, 1.6 Mbit/s is not near-DVD quality, not even with modern codecs. It's when the movie has a lot of action in the scene that quality suffers - with some blockiness here and there. Sound quality is pretty good although I don't know if it's more than 2 channel or not as I only have a 2 channel amp.

So whilst you guys are all waiting for GT5 to come out why not watch a movie?! Give Mubi a try and let me know whether it's any good!

3 comments:

  1. I loaded up MUBI and had a very brief poke around, the core thing here is MUBI is for avant garde stuff, Lovefilm is for your general consumer movies. When I've had a proper look at both I'll post up, not sure when I'll get to it though got too much to do!

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  2. Avant garde service you say? - mubi. What we want is a 3d pr0n service - maybe it would be called Nudi!

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  3. downloaded this app. will have to give it a look sometime. Not got a LF account as i basically work opposite a BlockBusters.

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