Saturday 6 August 2011

OT: Netflix

If you are buying, or have bought, a Sony Blu-ray player to watch Netflix movies on your big screen TV, be advised not all movies are in the Blu-ray listings.

No mention of that before forking out $150 for the player and $70 for a gizmo to access the Netflix menu on the TV screen.

We made the discovery while scanning Netflix on a laptop then logging onto Netflix using the Blu-ray player and its catalogue was lacking titles.

An understanding Netflix rep said Blu-ray players don't have the capacity to list all of the Netflix movies, documentaries and TV shows, but computers do.

So if your computer is not hooked up to your TV and you want to watch Netflix fare on TV, scan Netflix's full catalogue on your computer and do a Blu-ray search for titles you want to watch.

It is a nuisance  that hopefully Blu-ray manufacturers can eliminate for the benefit of Netflix users.

2 comments:

  1. Netflix's Canadian offerings are already pretty thin to start with, so only having access to a fraction of them would be kind of frustrating.

    I like the idea of Netflix, but I can't really see it taking off in Canada until they get some better licensing agreements, and Canadian internet providers raise their bandwith caps to a more reasonable level, which I can't really see them being that keen to do, since most of them also own TV-based services that compete with Netflix.

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  2. Exactly. Netflix customers who are using only Blu-ray players to access programming are being deprived of a much wider catalogue.

    What we are doing now is looking up Netflix titles on the laptop and using Blu-ray to watch the movies on TV.

    The Blu-ray deficiency is a nuisance and is not a plus for Netflix, which needs all the help it can get to continue its growth in Canada.

    As for caps, our best move was from Bell to TekSavvy a couple of years ago. There are unlimited plans. Our plan has a 300-gig cap - more than adequate for our movie needs.

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