Reply With QuoteIn my experience its OK for a month or two.
The good thing about Netflix is that you are not tied in beyond a one month period and it's easy to cancel
I just searched the netflix catalogue for "london has fallen" and "the Martian" and it came back with no matches : Question :
is it worth paying the money or is it just a bunch of old films online ?
just when do they make it onto the Netflix catalogue - how long does it take - anyone know ? Opinions ?
or have I screwed up the search do you think?
B
Last edited by Brian; 14th August 2016 at 15:07.
In my experience its OK for a month or two.
The good thing about Netflix is that you are not tied in beyond a one month period and it's easy to cancel
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I think it's worth the money. Definitely worth the 30 day trial, check the Netflix thread here for some belting suggestions to whet your appetite. Some of the programmes there are excellent. The film choice isn't very up to date and they don't get many new ones very quickly. The Martian for example, I can't see that being available for some time.
Netflix is just ok. I don't have my own subscription but piggy-back off a friend's. If they cancelled I wouldn't pay for it myself.
I think it's poor, but it really depends on what your alternatives are.
for what it costs a month it is worth having, it is one facet of my overall viewing material.
there are some good box sets on there, and some good movies, but you will get through these is the first few months, after that it depends on your likes.
I have it along with Amazon Prime, and back it all up with a few downloads from torrent sites.
I've left and returned 4 times. Like others have said, it's ok. Movies etc are pretty poor in my opinion. if they had decent up to date stuff id happily pay for it. Unfortunately i watch a few things then wonder why i have it, then promptly cancel it again. The Netflix original series i find decent. but for longevity its just boring.
I really rate it in fact it's far better then Sky which I think is garbage at least with Netflix if you want a good documentary they have plenty rather than Sky as all they have are car pimping programmes that they call documentariies, utter dross I only get it for the walking dead and game of thrones and also being able to record on the box and if it wasn't for a 65% discount it would be dumped.
I've been a member about 5 times. I used to use the vpn hack and use us content but couldn't be bothered to stick with it each time.
I rejoined earlier this year for making a murderer. I use it regularly now and have watched some great films and documentaries. The Netflix original stuff is superb.
For the price I find it fantastic now. I'd happily keep this and bin off sky if the Mrs would agree
UK selection is lousy compared to other countries. And not refreshed often enough. Hard to recommend unless you're prepared to circumvent the geographic restrictions.
It was OK for £5 a month but I cancelled when they put the price up. I think Amazon Prime offers better value, as you get a wider selection plus it's inclusive of free music and deliveries.
If you don't have sky or virgin I think its not a bad top up to freeview and ok value. The films are a bit older, but compared to the cost of sky its a bargain.
It's rubbish for movies, but excellent for TV shows. There is more good stuff on Netflix than you could possibly watch, but it may take some effort to find it all as their UI is awful.
I ditched my normal TV package several years ago so only watch Netflix plus the news on iPlayer. Recently added Amazon to give it a try. Still not as good as Netflix but they do have some better movies and works with most STBs now, so may be worth a look.
Only very occasionally is there a TV series that I want to watch badly enough I have to buy it, Game of Thrones being the best example. Still cheaper than paying for Virgin/Sky. Movies are a bigger problem though, so if that's your main concern, Netflix may not be that great.
In short, get the trial and watch Stranger Things, then maybe a few more of the Netflix Originals like House of Cards, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Daredevil, Marco Polo, etc. It's getting so that is now the main reason to have Netflix. They are not focusing on a film catalogue anymore, although there is an upcoming deal with Disney, which may lead to them getting the new Star Wars movies for a limited time, much like they did with the Hobbit movies in the UK (the US didn't get these, we also get several Pixar movies already).
I just wish I could cancel Sky and keep Netflix and get Amazon Prime as well but it would mean losing the Sky box that I can record things like match of the day etc etcOriginally Posted by westberks
I've just cancelled ours purely based on the fact that we have hardly used it in the last two months. We also have Amazon Prime so there's a bit of overlap between the services, and like another poster here mentioned, and I agree with, there's more value added from Amazon Prime. It might be worth looking into.
I also find it depends a lot on your free time. I used Netflix a lot when I was ravelling frequently for work so it was a combination of being away from the family/boredom that meant I could catch up on a lot of TV that I didn't have time to otherwise, i.e. I used to binge watch House of Cards in the evenings after work. If we had the time / lifestyle to do that, I think we'd probably keep our subscription up.
Just get another PVR like YouView. BT or TalkTalk will probably give you one for nothing if you switch to them.
Its ok only.
Now TV is a belter though IMO!!
Crikey what is that I don't understand? What is you view.
Same here, got a screen off my daughter, so defo worth it.
PVR stands for Personal Video Recorder, they are also called DVRs where the D stands for Digital. I had a Humax one years ago, which was really good. These typically work with standard digital freeview channels. I'm not sure if you can still go out and buy one easily as I haven't bothered with normal TV for some time, but you can probably find them online, or as mentioned, different companies have their own equivalents. Tivo and Sky+ are just the brand-names for a fairly generic thing. The only difference with Sky and Virgin is that they have their own channels which you obviously can't get on freeview, and the generic ones that work with freeview do not work with satellite or cable, and vice-versa.
If you do go looking for a PVR, one of the most important things is the number of channels (tuners) it supports. My Humax was 2.5 channels, which means you could record 2 and watch another, provided that the thing you're watching was on one of the same multiplexes (MUX) as the two things you're recording. The other channels would get greyed out whenever two recordings were happening at once. One MUX typically has somewhere between 2 and 10 channels, depending on the broadcast quality of each channel. IIRC Sky+ and Tivo also use the 2.5 channel system, although it doesn't work exactly the same way because they don't use the same MUX system as digital freeview (IIRC on Virgin you could watch any channel while recording two others - not sure about Sky). That Humax came out years ago so it may be possible to get ones now that support even more channels. Some of the earlier PVRs also had restrictions on whether you could use features like rewinding live TV at the same time as recording, so you'll want to look into that sort of thing as well.
Netflix is generally pretty good for TV, especially stuff like Better Call Saul.
Not so great for movies - you'll have to wait quite a long time for any big names, and limited back catalogue. (Apparently US Netflix is better in this respect).
There's normally at least a year from theatrical release to Netflix, unlike Sky (esp pay per view) which is more like 6 months. It's a lot cheaper though, so no surprise.
Amazon is no better. Similar selection of older movies, but they're very annoying with TV series - some are included, but often newer seasons are paid for. Not a great model.
I used to have Lovefilm, which was great - BluRay quality, with movies released roughly the same time as Sky PPV - then Amazon more than doubled the monthly cost, so more out of principle than anything else, I cancelled.
I now just wait a little longer for movies to filter through to Netflix.
Itunes rentals are also quite a good option, especially the weekly 99p offers - they're often quite new movies.
Just gone through the same process (well two weeks in). So far I think Netflix is worth the money. I don't really care about the very latest movies... I can wait for them to be a year or two old before I see them. However I've also just got a Roku which adds things like All4 and iplayer into one package. Now that WAS a good buy. No longer trawling all the IPTV providers to find a programme or film... they're there with a single front end. I got Netflix because of things like Better Call Saul which, okay, I was 'sourcing' elsewhere but paying a fiver a month for a lot less hassle was worth it. I refuse to pay for more than one IPTV provider and, if I was going to go with only one, Netflix seems okay.
Since Netflix started pouring money into original programming (House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black) other streaming services like Amazon Prime have started upping their game so wether you have Netflix or Amazon or any other, you're likely to find something to whet your appetite.
IMO Netflix are making some of the best OD TV at the moment. House Of Cards has gotten a little stale but new series like Stranger Things have been fantastic. Narcos is really good and BoJack Horseman is probably the best animated comedy since Family Guy went stupid after Season 6.
If you like the Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff the programming on Netflix has been fantastic - properly gritty and brutal action in Daredevil and the Jessica Jones series. And the trailer released last week for the new Luke Cage spinoff is looking pretty sweet too.
Like I say - I don't think you can go wrong with either Netflix or Amazon. However it's definitely worth saying that if you're into your films, then you might just be better off getting a Now TV/Sky Movies monthly subscription.
I've got a two year old Freeview Humax PVR and I've got to say I wouldn't buy another for two main reasons:
Piccy over which video formats it likes.
The LAN port won't wake up without going into the network settings every time (I think this is my switch but everything else works okay and it annoys me).
Also won't work with the various IPTV services.
I don't watch live TV so, for me, going for a Roku still gives me the 'normal' BBC/ITV/4/5 programmes plus the option to add IPTV subscription channels. The ability to work with UPnP would be nice but not the end of the world - I've copied all my archived media onto a USB drive and plugged that into the Roku.
Actually just read the instructions on Roku a bit more and there looks like there's a way to do the local media things.... Roku Media Channel or Plex and two things I've read about so far.
Last edited by solwisesteve; 15th August 2016 at 08:01.
Hmmm interesting re the Humax as that is an option I was considering as I do record some terrestrial tv programmes as I want to get rid of the Sky expense but if I do I can't record but I do have a Smart TV and can get iplayer on it!
Go for YouView. Doddle to set up and the user interface is better than Sky's. It will feel like an easy transition.
Okay I don't want to sound like a Roku salesman but the advantage of the Roku is it integrates the various platforms like iplayer, ITV player, etc.. into one unified interface. My '180 quid from Sainsburys' smart TV does Netflix, youtube, iplayer, etc (but not All4 :-( ) but they're as separate apps. Roku allows the ability to search for content across all the platforms.
I think it is very much a region thing.
Netflix US is very different (and richer) compared to Netflix UK, or Netflix anywhere-other-than-the-US. Here in Greece for example the selection is much more limited, especially when it comes to movies, and there are many legal alternatives these days
Alex
I was in Hungary recently — HUNGARY! — and I couldn't believe how much better the Netflix selection is there versus the UK.
Really? I am quite surprised.
Still, I'm sure it is quite limited compares to the US one. Yes, there are VPN solutions, but most people (including myself) just can't be bothered
Alex
I had mine over 10 years ago when these were fairly cutting-edge and the Humax 9200T was the best one around. The software was pretty good. I preferred it to the Tivo that Virgin uses. However, I only used it as a PVR. I never bothered to network it. I also recall that at the time, nobody even knew what the USB port on the front was meant to be for. I think they intended to add some kind of media player, but hadn't implemented it yet. That model would never handle modern video codecs anyway.
Yes, I am pretty much Roku-only these days as well. I've used the Media Channel to play an MP4 off a USB stick plugged directly into the Roku box. It's pretty straightforward. I couldn't get the DLNA stuff working yet because it doesn't seem to like my Linux NAS and I didn't care enough to faff about trying to diagnose the problem. I believe it works pretty well if you have a Windows PC as your media server.
You could use a proxy to get the US stuff if you run it through your laptop.
I think Sky is best personally but I use it in combo with Netflix and Prime.
I have a Chromecast plugged into the TV upstairs so I can access All 4 so would the Roku be different to that?
Netflix have been blocking VPNs and proxies for a while now, so the only way you're likely to get this to work is to set up your own VPN on a VPS to fly under the radar, which is beyond the technical skills of 99% of people, on top of the cost. It can work through STBs such as Roku and Apple TV, as long as you set up alternative DNS servers as well, which is necessary to re-route traffic when you don't have a separate VPN app.
I used to do this using one of the big VPN services (that's now 100% blocked even though they fought it for a few months), back when the UK selection wasn't very good, but nowadays the UK has some content that the US doesn't and vice-versa. That's why I cancelled it long before the blocking started: I'd watched all the good US exclusives, which even didn't take that long. It's not as one-sided as it was. Over the last few years, the UK has been gradually getting more stuff that was previously US-only (recently added all the Star Trek series, for example). Still probably more movies in the US, but many of them are crappy B-movies anyway. The UK for some reason gets Pixar content that the US does not, although both will probably get more of this once the Disney deal goes through in September. We also got all 3 Hobbit movies, just one at a time. The US did not get these at all. Things like the original versions of The Bridge and The Killing are also on the UK Netflix, but the US only gets the English-language remakes, which aren't as good. We're lucky in that regard. Apparently the selection in places like Canada and South Africa is still really poor.
These days I don't think trying to find a working VPN service would be worth the hassle. I actually could set up my own VPN if I thought it was worth the cost and hassle, but I don't. Probably even less so for most people.
Nice information, good read - thanks. I haven't used a proxy for Netflix in about a year so I guess this is new.
I use a VPN for other stuff, still works mostly to watch terrestrial streams in other countries. However my knowledge does not go beyond simply knowing what one is and how to use it.
I'm getting more into the Roku. I got the USB media and UPnP working last night... it just 'found' my various NAS units and seemed to work without any playing around. As an aside, do you know how to make the search facility only search those channels you've added to the setup? When I ask it to search for stuff it keeps on throwing things up like available on Amazon or Google for xyz cost when I haven't actually 'added' those channels to my channel list because I'm not paying for them!
I could never see myself paying for Netflix month-in, month-out. I paid for a couple of months beyond our initial 30-day trail simply so that we could get through Breaking Bad and since then I've been offered 2 additional 30-day trials; we are in the middle of one now. I have used it via VPN in the past but see that they've now blocked this - as we are watching stuff that is also on German Netflix this doesn't bother me and therefore haven't put any mileage into investigating a workaround.
The movie offer is fairly thin but we use Mubi, Iplayer and Curzon Cinema for that.
I haven't used that search but it seems you've answered your own question. I'm guessing it works a bit like Google, i.e., they maintain a single index on their own servers which has all the content across all the apps and they don't filter that according to which apps you have installed. It would probably be too slow to try to do the search locally on the device itself.
I do find the ads on the right of the channel listings frequently annoying, as they are usually for stuff on Google Play or the Sky store or whatever and not stuff you've actually subscribed to. This makes sense, but it would be nice if they'd occasionally advertise stuff from more obscure channels that you already have and don't know about. If they did that I'd be more likely to pay attention to those ads, although I'd still be annoyed whenever it takes me to something that costs as much to stream as it would to just buy the boxed set on Blu Ray.
Yeah, they started cracking down just under a year ago IIRC, probably not long after you stopped. They use an adaptive algorithm similar to a spam filter to detect VPN traffic, so there was a bit of a battle with the major VPN providers like Unblock-US for a few months as they tried to work around it by changing their IP addresses. People were posting "still working" advisories on various forums about the smaller VPNs for a bit longer. But after a while it all died down and as far as I know, nothing mainstream works anymore.
Again, really interesting. Thanks for sharing. I currently use cyberghost but I imagine that that is fairly certain to be blocked.
According to Google, yes, it is blocked.
Tell me, what type of proxy are you using? Choose a proxy for the same purpose!
I think you don't miss anything by not subscribing. You can find their production and other offerings online for free...
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