Netflix

Well finally decided to pay up the $8 a month and get Netflix.  Well, actually I haven't paid anything yet as you get a free 30 day trial.  My impetus was selling a portion of my NFLX stock which has increased 5-fold from the low, though still not quite back to the $300 high where it was.  So that's in effect paying for the subscription.

So how is it?

First of all, lots (and lots) of content.  No more searching through Crackle or Popcorn Flix to find a movie that I might want to watch.  And not only movies, lots of TV shows too.

In fact, that's probably what I'm going to use it most for, TV shows.

Right off the bat, there's Everybody Loves Raymond which is not on hulu.  I was afraid of whether I would be able to see subtitles, but there's an option where you can turn it on and off and I can't imagine why older models of Roku wouldn't be able to support this.

There's also the Dick Van Dyke Show, Family Ties, Cheers, the Andy Griffith Show, Leave It To Beaver.

But they don't have everything though.  No Three Stooges, I Love Lucy, Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island, Get Smart, Green Acres, Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In The Family, Sanford and Son, Bob Newhart Show, Welcome Back Kotter, Taxi, Seinfeld, King of Queens.

Some of these are on hulu though: I Love Lucy, Green Acres, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart Show.  And Three Stooges is on youtube (illegally) with some on crackle.

What else is on?  Hercules, Xena, Charmed, Monk, Columbo.  So no real need to keep the DVDs I have (well maybe Columbo since Netflix doesn't have all the episodes).  One nice thing is that the Hercules and Xena shows have subtitles, which the original Anchor Bay DVD sets didn't have.

Netflix has 13 episodes of Dog Whisperer.  There are much more (currently 109) on hulu (but not hulu+).  Oddly the subtitles didn't work on the Roku, but did work on my iPad and computer.  Maybe that's what they meant by subtitles not working on older version on the roku.  And not all the shows have subtitles, though most of them do.  Coach was one show that didn't, though the website says it does.

Another one was Ken Burns' Baseball series (which I was suprised to see on there).  The old DVD set (which I have) has closed caption for TV, but no DVD subtitles.  However I think the newer remastered series does have subtitles.  [12/9/13 - Netflix has updated the series with subtitles and the 10th Inning episodes.]

And lots of movies.  I was surprised to see The Avengers on there.  Also Captain America and Thor.  But no Iron Man or Hulk or X-Men.

Using the universal Roku search (for actor names for axample), there's actually a lot more movies not on, then on.  But what do you expect for $8?

They do have all the Star Trek TV series (also on hulu+ except for the animated series).  But not all of the movies (just Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Insurrection, Nemesis).

*** [8/30/13]

Here's one minor gripe about Netflix.  Yes, they have subtitles for the majority of the shows, but they don't look very good on my Roku, mainly because they are sometimes hard to read overlaid over the picture.  On the other hard, they look fine to me on my iPad, partly because the iPad has a 4:3 screen, so the subtitles are partly display below the picture.  And they also look OK on my computer on the 16:9 LCD screen.  I wonder if it's because I have a Roku HD instead of a Roku 2 or Roku 3.  [I would think unlikely.]

[12/9/13 - The subtitles look different depending on the player.  For example, the subtitles are yellow on the Windows 8 app, but white while playing on a browser.  They also look bigger on the Roku.]

[1/14/14 - yep Netflix subtitles on Roku appear as pale yellow even on the Roku 3.  Evidently the subtitles look better on Apple TV.  Reading further, evidently the new Netflix app on the Roku 3 has more readable subtitles.  So maybe I should get a Roku 3.  Or an Apple TV.  Or just wait to see if the new Netflix app will eventually come to my Roku HD.  Or just hook up my laptop to the PC.]

*** [4/15/14]

Cool.  Netflix is now showing the Roku captions instead of their own on my Roku HD.  Don't see that the Roku app was updated, so I'd have to deduce that the Roku firmware was updated.  And somehow it connected to the Netflix app.  Another clue is that there is an option to set opacity to 50% whereas before it wasn't there (they just went from 25% to 75%).  So one less reason to upgrade to a Roku 3.   However Hulu Plus still is locking up and using their own caption style.  And still no YouTube.  VideoBuzz works, but doesn't support captions.  I have my doubts that captions would work on Roku YouTube anyway, as it doesn't work on the Apple TV.

Apparently captions have to be in SMPTE Timed Text format and was added in software build 4.9 in December 2012.  Looking now, I my Roku is on software version 5.4.