I've always been under the impression that
Netflix is marvellously special and that it's crammed with masses of cool TV shows so I'm freaked out because it's such a letdown.
It launched in South Africa last week so I signed up and tried it out and I was stumped by the selection because it's a yawn-fest. Don't get me wrong, they've got some good titles among them but there isn't nearly as much choice as I imagined there would be. I assumed they'd have thousands of shows and that you'd feel as if you don't have enough life to watch everything but it isn't like that at all because they only have a couple of hundred shows.
Also, there are loads of series that aren't real A-list shows. There's a huge amount of hot property that's missing from the line-up which means you'd feel as if you're missing out if you only had Netflix and not another TV platform to complement it.
What annoys me about the overall experience is that they've paid much more attention to movies than to TV. The movies are neatly categorised according to genre but the TV shows aren't so they're lumped together with no structure which makes the TV section random and arb.
The streaming works well though - the episodes I played streamed perfectly with no buffering which could prove to be a drawcard for them. Another positive is that they have Netflix original series, which is cool but doesn't make up for the lack of other titles.
Pricewise, it's a lot
more expensive than any of the four South African VOD services which are mostly priced at R99 per month. I haven't streamed a whole episode with each of them so I don't know how well they work but if they stream well then they offer much more value for money.
ShowMax in particular has a much more attractively sized selection and includes South African shows which Netflix doesn't have. I've heard that they'll getting but they don't have now.
The prices for Netflix reach
double the others:
- It costs $7.99 (R133) for the basic package, which allows you to watch on one screen only and doesn't offer Ultra HD streaming.
- $9.99 (R166) for the standard package, which allows you to watch on two different screens at the same time and also doesn't offer Ultra HD streaming.
- $11.99 (R199) for the Premium package - you can watch on four screens and in Ultra HD.
Here's a link to the site... you get a month's free trial so you can give it a try to see if you feel the same as me:
Netflix.