[OT] Netflix, Amazon Prime, Amazon Fire etc.

A few days ago, I received an e-mail from my ISP (Zen) saying they had received an illegal download complaint from 20th Century Fox, which, predictably, was traced (by me) to our 14 year old son. Spoken to Zen who say further action extremely unlikely if content deleted and no further downloads (which will be monitored) take place.

Moving forward, we now have a Netflix 30 day trial running, subsequently

5.99 per month, for son to watch films or whatever. However, having done a little more delving, there seems to be an Amazon service, also available via TV as well as PC. However, our TV is fairly modern flatscreen with USB and HDMI sockets but not a smart TV, so Fire TV is required. Stick 35.00 or box 79.00

Am I missing anything? Is this the way to go, to get Netflix or Amazon via the TV as well as PCs, phones etc? Is there a better/cheaper option? Any thoughts?

Reply to
News
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Chromecast is a similar dongle, does netflix, blinkbox, iplayer, youtube etc plus screencasting from your own devices.

You should be able to pick one up in Currys/PCWorld/Argos

Reply to
Andy Burns

or raspberry pi, and no doubt many other platforms that support netflix.

Yup, basically a smart tv is one with a computer built in, nothing to stop you replicating the effect with separate boxes. Note also that some Blueray players include smart TV style capabilities.

Reply to
John Rumm

I would recommend a Roku 3 for serious use.

The Chromecast is OK ish - but it tends to "drop off" - not losing the network connection (it finishes playing the film just fine) but after about 15-30 minutes it becomes impossible to cast a new stream to it - it just disappears from the phone as a casting option.

I've seen other complaints about this with no real fix offered.

My Roku 3 however both can accept cast streams from Android and (better) it has its own remote so it behaves more properly like a media box that can be used by itself.

It also has an ethernet port as well as WIFI.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Can't say I've noticed that, indeed I can use the tablet to wake up chromecast which in turn switches the TV on ready to cast, but I see they have recently introduced a special USB charger that provides ethernet connectivity to the chromecast, that would suit me because the chromecast doesn't use 5GHz WiFi, but it's only available in USA flavour at the moment ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Roku 3 works well for me, though mainly for iPlayer, which it does well over WiFi, which is just as well as it doesn't like the ethernet connection.

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon

This can be cheaper and better than adpating the TV depending on how good the box is...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message , News writes

Note that what is on the services differs, and changes over time as things drop of the service and new things come along. So you might want to look at what's on offer from each one. And the film selection is relatively limited, and newer films tend not to be on them (as the rights holders want to make more money from DVD and individual streaming purchases). At the moment we are preferring Netflix

Of course you can stop and start subs as you wish.

Also worth noting (let 14yo loose on it) that Netflix has different content depending on the region. It is possible to 'fool' the system into thinking you are in the US or whatever and have access to their content.

Cheapest way if you a suitable laptop/tablet/phone with HDMI output is to hook that up and display it on the TV. though using a Chromecast/Fire/Roku is a nicer experience.

Reply to
Chris French

On 23 Jul 2015, The Natural Philosopher grunted:

Speaking as somebody who has a smart TV (with separate amplifier) in one room, and a standard TV with my son's Playstation attached (which in effect converts the TV to 'smart') in the other, I would say there's a big fundamental advantage to having a separate box.

On TV 1, I can select between the inputs 'Virginmedia' or DVD... if I want the smart TV capability (which includes streaming pre-recorded video, music or photos from a network-attached drive), I have to switch the TV into a different mode (call it 'network' mode). That takes several seconds each time to go back and forth, and you have to exit and kill whatever you were doing on the network when you want to go back to any of the 'conventional' inputs.

On TV 2, however, the inputs are in effect 'Virginmedia', 'DVD', or 'Network', and the TV just acts as a monitor, which is much more intuitive to the user. It also means you can flip in and out of 'network' mode instantly, and the 'network' input remains active. So I can pause a streamed program while briefly flipping over to VirginMedia to check something, or conversely have a live internet browser running in background while watching TV.

I can't see a single advantage of TV 1, and I'd never get a model with built-in 'smart' again (if it will be possible to avoid!)

Reply to
Lobster

formatting link
is the service I use. Warning though - chromecast sticks, roku and even the Netflix app on android hard code 8.8.8.8 as one of their DNS (ignoring the DHCP supplied value).

This is broken behaviour, but is designed to mess up DNS based region switchers.

You will need to put a firewall rule on your router that redirects

8.8.8.8 (and 8.8.4.4) to the unblock-us DNS.

Anyway - that gives a huge amount of content. For the odd other thing I tend to buy or rent from Google's play store which has a fantastic selection, especially of esoteric and classic films.

I'm pretty close to telling BBC to shove their license. The *only* thing we reliable watch is Dr Who.

Reply to
Tim Watts

It's impossible to avoid - and I agree with you completely.

The panel will vastly outlast the "smart" bit and whereas with a Roku or chromestick, you can junk and replace it, the smart TV is not upgradeable.

Also you get things like: will Samsung give a crap about firmware and app upgrades on a 3 year old box? (Took long enough for my 18 month Samsung Note 3 to get a Lollypop update).

Roku as they only have 3 or so models and that being their only and core business are very much more likley to support their devices long term.

Sadly, it seems to be cheaper to get a smart TV and ignore the smart bit and buy a box anyway.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Whilst I agree in principle with what David said, in reality it doesn't seem to be an issue for us -as ever use cases.. Probably because we don't switch between inputs that much - most viewing is done via the TV's smart interface (iplayer and netflix mostly at the moment (we don't really bother with streaming local content or music etc.)) or via the attached 'htpc' which nowadays is really just used for playing downloaded/ripped movies or TV shows via xbmc.

Live TV only really gets watched when in laws come to stay.

(yes we could use it for stuff we do via the TV smart interface, but really it's much easier to use the TV.)

Can't see why it has to be sadly - does it make any difference if you don't use it and don't have it connected to the net?

We got a Samsung Smart TV 3 years ago (really cos it came with the TV), but in reality we've used it lots. When eventually it stops working properly/doesn't do what we want we can just get a suitable box/stick or whatever

Reply to
Chris French

In message , Tim Watts writes

Thanks for all the comments. Very useful.

This service is really for son, so I'll let him choose whether we go with Netflix or Amazon. I think he'll go with Netflix.

Most of his viewing is via phone or computer, so the TV part is secondary but, given that our TV is not smart, a box or stick seems to be the way forward, particularly as TV viewing (by parents) is likely to be minimal. The Roku stick seems to be the answer.

One last question. Assuming we select Netflix, with one device, is it possible to record, for later viewing? I'm thinking that we (parents) could download and record whilst son is at school, for later evening viewing, so we could watch something recorded while he uses the live download.

Reply to
News

Netflix doesn't work like that - it is all on-demand and the concept of recording has no meaning.

Reply to
Tim Watts

On 25 Jul 2015, Tim Watts grunted:

Are there any such internet-based *do* work like that - as far as I know, there aren't?

Since at Chez Lobster we watch a lot of so-called 'boxed sets'; by which I mean 'series of episodic drama', we rarely watch live TV but set the VirginMedia box to record particular series, and it may be many months before we'll get round to watching the whole lot, usually depending on which permutation of the family is in residence at the time. For that reason we have always steered clear of on-demand offerings, assuming they are likely to be taken down before we've finished watching the series...

Reply to
Lobster

That is the one thing I do not like about Netflix.

That they don't advise on the end date of the titles - why not - they must have decided to pay x-months licensing?

Reply to
Tim Watts

In message , Lobster writes

No, except iPlayer I guess - which will let you download and gives you

30 days IIRC to watch. And get iplayer will get it for you if you want to keep it.

It is possible to record the video output from Netflix - or anything else - with a screen capture program but you have record it whilst playing it. all rather clunky. With Netflix, for an extra quid a month you can stream to 2 devices.

Mostly it's been ok.

Though there have been occasions when something has fallen of the service and I've gone looking for *cough* - alternative sources to download it from (which is where we came in)

Reply to
Chris French

I wish Netflix did do a download-and-watch - then I could watch films on the train. The problem of DRM is well solved so I do not know why they don't...

Reply to
Tim Watts

Licensing I imagine. I guess the rights holders would want more money for that facility

Reply to
Chris French

Because it hasn?t been.

Reply to
Hank

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