said by kamm :

Netflix streaming quality is worse than Time Warner Cable's abhorrrent, notoriousy fucked up, compressed-as-hel PoS SD quality which alone is an incredible "achievement".

said by Combat Chuck :

If you have a good connection Netflix streaming is good quality. The problem I've run into is that their software is very conservative in picking the quality of the stream and you can't force it to a better quality even if your connection is able to handle it.