Chris Barnes, over at Barnesian.com, has found a workaround that allows him to watch Netflix instant streaming content on his PC despite the fact that it is powered by the diminutive Intel Atom processor. Basically the workaround is to tell Netflix to limit your “video quality.” This setting causes it to lower the bitrate of the video that you receive. It should lower it a level that your under-powered PC can actually handle. The unfortunate thing is that this setting is at the Netflix account level, so if you’re watching on machines that don’t have any problems with the high bitrate video you’ll also be lowering the quality on those boxes. That is of course unless you want to constantly manage the video quality. Check out his post for all of the details, and let us know how it works out for you!
Source: Barnesian
[…] Source: The Digital Media Zone […]
This is awesome! I’m going to try it right away. My Atom powered HTPC is great for just about everything except Netflix for this very reason. Non HD content would play fine but I’d have to drop out to a browser so I could disable HD when that came up.
I’m planning an upgrade to Core i3 but this will give me some breathing room for now.
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