Netflix - is it worth getting?

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Originally Posted by wasabi

Tried it with several devices including the Tivo, not just the main TV either. All sucky and washed out. Tweaked it to supposedly force highest quality in the menus. Still unacceptably sucky. I can stream iplayer HD easily at the same time as the wife doing the same. Really wanted to like it, but it was pants. Really could do with a cached download option like iplayer has too. Never mind the needing to find a trick to get the full US range of shows - the UK range is dire.

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Odd, though according to Ars Technica there is plenty of history of ISPs throttling Netflix.

Perhaps it was the material you were watching, there is some variation in source material quality. Guess we will never know. Going from watching Warehouse 13 on Netflix to watching the last few episodes on DVD I found the drop in quality on DVD quite surprising.

I have a Samsung and an LG, both look fine. I also currently have NowTV as their little box was on offer for £12.50 with three months of movies subscription. The LG TV can do NowTV natively, but even without the underpowered little 720p gadget involved you can just see that the quality isn't as good as Netflix. The three months of NowTV is about to run out, I have already cancelled as I can't imagine paying a tenner a month for that service. £4 a month with the bundled little box to play with was a good use of just over a tenner though :D

Again, thanks to all that replied. In the end I plumped up for Netflix at the weekend (the four user setup). Unfortunately, I managed to get the email address wrong, so I had to contact Netflix support late on Saturday night to get it sorted out. They were pretty helpful. :)

Service itself is a bit strange. I'm definitely seeing poor quality when a title first starts, then it's almost as if the app is testing the connection because after less than 2 minutes we're up to quality as good as normal HD TV.

Content is 1st class, although the kids are moaning because it's light on US-generated content (Big Bang, Two Broke Girls, etc). Tried a test yesterday where I started watching something on TV (Tivo app) then stopped it, went out and picked up the film I was watching on app on my phone. Quality - over two bar 3G (Three) - was actually pretty respectable, although the initial start up took a heck of a long time.

Unfortunately for Amazon, the selection on NF is many times better than that on Amazon Prime, so I'll be cancelling my (expensive) Prime membership later this month. Now if I can get £3/month back from Virgin (by cancelling the sport channels that we don't need) then I'll be quids in.

Glad you are enjoying it.

I swapped my Sky subscription for NetFlix, so big saving here.

And yes, I think the system is usually testing the connection at the start. Either that or they are just avoiding you having to watch a spinning "buffering" icon at the start, and tbh a lot of material it is fine.

You can usually go into an options menu and force high quality. That might help, it might not :D

The Wii-U is still the best client I have used though.

You should absolutely get it. Make sure to browse the library via a US vpn for maximum amount of content :)

A little bit off topic, but I would not recommend Amazon Prime just for the Instant Video, not the best selection, I consider it more of an added perk of next day delivery for the whole family, would not pay for it stand alone.

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Originally Posted by Stickwolf

A little bit off topic, but I would not recommend Amazon Prime just for the Instant Video, not the best selection, I consider it more of an added perk of next day delivery for the whole family, would not pay for it stand alone.

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I'd go further than this - the Amazon Instant Video (like a lot of Prime to be honest) is just broken. I'd cautiously welcomed it being added to the Prime menu - and then discovered that it's only some content that's included in your Prime subscription. The rest is the usual rental setup - and like for like pricing shows that it's actually more expensive than other services such as Virgin Media's FilmFlex VOD.

Prime has some nice features - like being able to nominate members of your family to share your "free" delivery. Trouble is that it'd be far more use if other services - such as the Kindle lending library - were also capable of being shared.

If Prime did the delivery only option for a decent price (say £30-40) then I'd be interested. As it stands though, with all that "unnecessary" overhead it's just not worth the money to me. And for that reason I'm cancelling my Prime membership shortly (before it renews).

On the other hand - barring a few lousy setup experiences - Netflix has impressed. Kids certainly love it. ;) Biggest annoyance at the moment is that titles are "leaking" from one profile into another. E.g. I watched Archer the other day and both kids now have it in their "recently viewed" list for their profiles.

Netflix is even better when you use a DNS service to access all regions, unlocking a lot more content than what is available in just one region.

Netflix is really good, i wasn't keen at first but then soon after i fell in love with it.