TiVo Netflix hands-on

TiVo was nice enough to hit us with the Netflix-enabling Fall Service Update a little early, and the going's been pretty good -- this is probably our favorite Netflix streaming implementation yet. Although it's not as flashy of an experience as the Xbox 360's Netflix implementation, it's faster to start streaming, and to our eyes it looks a lot better -- the 360's output is really dark, while the TiVo looks bright and crisp. On top of that, we've never been able to get our 360 to hit more than two bars when playing HD-capable content, while the TiVo instantly spooled up and started streaming full-quality 720p video -- and it can drop back to SD during network slowdowns and then pop up to HD again, while the 360 is stuck at whatever res it started the movie at. We still wish Netflix's streaming selection was anywhere close to what a typical cable company has on demand, but that'll come with time -- for right now we're definitely impressed.
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