Whining about stuff (i) [Netflix]

[hirez]

The other month, I caved in and signed up for the Netflix because of Sense8. Which you should all watch.

While poking at the dreadful interface by means of the Virgin tellybocker, which was more or less like trying to enter a long name into a highscore table on an old arcade machine with a shagged joystick, I discovered that the choice of other entertainments was pretty poor.

Later, I went and had a look at the thing on a different sort of computer, where we discover that the UI was differently horrible. I also found a handful of things that I thought I would quite like to watch at some time, so 'tagged' them (or whatever word one is supposed to use) and then beetled downstairs to view one or more of them on some kit with better speakers.

They were nowhere to be found. Which I think you'll agree is a bit poor.

I guess there is the vague possibility that my IPv6 tunnel is confusing things, but it is still beyond me why (for instance) all of Foyle's War is available to the upstairs computers, but not the downstairs kit. You would think that a nice English series of programmes would be available to a nice English IP address ('That's four octets of the Queen's IPv4, Timmy!'), rather than some dreadful foreign IPv6 malarkey routed by a set of bad sorts through an anonymous rack of kit handy for AMS-IX. Why am I not being given the option to view the complete set of Onderweg naar Morgen or Goudkust?

Because the military-entertainment complex is run by feckwits, I imagine.

Comments

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

All the good stuff is on the US site. There are Ways and Means to viewing that, apparently...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yarp. A VPN tunnel and Bob's yr creepy uncle. Although all the consumer ones look dodgy as feck.

Out of interest, for those of you on handy computers, what does the '?locale=' report if/when you sign out?

I guess I'd better generate an IP6 tunnel to the US and see what happens.

[the_axel]

The country Netflix thinks you are in determines what programs are available to you due to licensing rights, and it won't show you shows that aren't available in that country.

Sometimes that causes odd things - like Canada had the latest seasons of Dr Who and Archer at least 2 months before the UK and USA did.

the_siobhan wants us to subscribe to it. Personally I think the old Bay and its cohorts are a more convenient way to get TV.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

It let Jason watch everything while we were in the US, which is when he finally believed me that UK Netflix is really, really pants in comparison.

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

The frustrating thing is that it won't show some stuff that's already been on in the UK on the UK site. The Walking Dead, for example, is available on both the US and German versions of the site, but despite 5 seasons have been shown in the UK it's not available at all. Ditto Supernatural - 9 seasons, all shown in the UK, but not on the UK site. Which is what makes the option of using subterfuge to make the site think you're based Elsewhere so tempting.

[mog-warbeast.livejournal.com]

In a related matter; a while back, we were accessing our watchy via a Wii as it was a hassle-free way to stream to the TV, and there were some things its iPlayer would not show us that our normal internet would. It transpired that these things were licensed for watchy on a computer but not on a Wii.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Channel 5 does this too. Person of Interest is available to PCs, but not to the Amazon Fire Stick