Monday, December 19, 2011

Netflix meh

I finally got Netflix. Yeah - I know - I'm such an early adopter. My excuse is that until this past week, I didn't have a consumer device that was Netflix-capable. Now I do.

The content available on this service is definitely not what I would refer to as top-notch, but there are some movies and TV shows that I never got to see for one reason or another and now I have instant access to them to watch at my leisure. That's really the point isn't it? Watch what you want when you want to.

There is one little caveat. Something Netflix should have told me when I signed up instead of making me investigate it for myself. By default, due to the ridiculous bandwidth-per-month caps that Canadian internet providers put on their customers, Netflix streams their programming in the lowest quality possible. They do this to save you on your bandwidth. As a result, it looks like crap. To a service provider who probably wants to attract new customers and maybe even keep them beyond the one month free trial, I have a suggestion. Let your new customers know about the quality selection options in their account settings. I had to go searching for a reason why my video quality was so shitty. A regular consumer wouldn't know this might be a thing to investigate.

If you're losing customers and are wondering why, this might be a reason.

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