Netflix Tighten UP

[Bill]

For the last few years, we’ve had access to Netflix on the basis that we were a family member of the account holder, but last week we were greeted by a screen informing us that things had changed, and we now need to have our own account to continue viewing. Since then, I’ve heard that several others have experienced the same.

We’ve never been big watchers of Netflix and only ever used it occasionally if there was nothing interesting on the normal channels, but we certainly wouldn’t pay extra for the privilege. The problem was that my wife was halfway through watching a series, something she didn’t normally do, so she wasn’t a happy bunny. She managed to watch through to the end of the series by clicking the button saying, “I’m away from home.” It’s still working over a week later, but I suspect we’re on borrowed time.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

i get netflix as part of my virgin package. so far have watched a couple of naff films and the series wednesday.

was one of those series that i had headr about and decided to give it a try. ended up thoroughly engrossed.

recently though have got into Alfred Hitchcock presents on one of the freeview channels. corny by todays standards but still fun to watch.

[Bill]

We’ve just added the Paramount streaming channel to our set top box on a seven-day free trial basis. This should allow me to binge on all the new episodes of Star Trek I missed when Amazon sold off their franchise at short notice. The vast majority of stuff on this channel is also available on Freeview so I don’t think £7 a month extra is worth it and I’ll definitely be cancelling it after a week.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

that is the annoying part of these pay for channels.

one or two exclusive series and the rest repeats from freeview channels.

when my contract comes up for renewal soon i will probably cancel my TV to the lowest level which will more than likely half my current monthly bill with virgin.

will keep the high level broadband and have to have the phone with that but will put the phone down to the cheapest rate they have.

only ever use it to phone the doctors or the chemist these days use the mobile for anybody else.

will mean i lose Netflix but seeing as at present i watch about an hour of tv a day, and that on freeview, it will be no great loss.

[Gary]

On 7/12/2023 at 1:58 PM, Bill said:

For the last few years, we’ve had access to Netflix on the basis that we were a family member of the account holder, but last week we were greeted by a screen informing us that things had changed, and we now need to have our own account to continue viewing. Since then, I’ve heard that several others have experienced the same.

We’ve never been big watchers of Netflix and only ever used it occasionally if there was nothing interesting on the normal channels, but we certainly wouldn’t pay extra for the privilege. The problem was that my wife was halfway through watching a series, something she didn’t normally do, so she wasn’t a happy bunny. She managed to watch through to the end of the series by clicking the button saying, “I’m away from home.” It’s still working over a week later, but I suspect we’re on borrowed time.

 

Bill 😊

It was easy to get around the issue Bill - all you needed to do was speak to the family member you share with and tell them to expect an email to authorise and boom - back on instantly

[Observer II]

I was glad to lose Netflix,  the films were woke and weak imo.   Much prefer Youtube now,  all sorts of genre, and genuine news.  😑

[Bill]

Quote

speak to the family member you share with and tell them to expect an email to authorise and boom - back on instantly

That’s exactly what I did although I don’t think it’ll last forever.

 I think I might have said this before, but some of the blokes I occasionally chat to down at the pub are paying nearly £120 per month in subscription charges so they never miss any of their beloved sports programming. Try and have a conversation about anything other than football and you may as well be talking to yourself. I think they’re all crazy paying what they do to binge on sport but they’re happy with what they do.

 I’ve though a lot about this in recent months and have come to the conclusion that pay for view is like a Big Mac while Freeview is more school dinners. I’m not going to labour this analogy suffice to say that set times meals with a varied diet is better for you than an all-day happy meal.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

so far this week i have watched 1 hour of tv and that was an episode of father brown last night. not been inclined or had the time due to current events in my life.

still once i get everything sorted out who knows i mat become, as my uncle used to say, "a teenage television zombie"...🤣

[Gary]

On 7/20/2023 at 8:45 PM, Bill said:

That’s exactly what I did although I don’t think it’ll last forever.

 I think I might have said this before, but some of the blokes I occasionally chat to down at the pub are paying nearly £120 per month in subscription charges so they never miss any of their beloved sports programming. Try and have a conversation about anything other than football and you may as well be talking to yourself. I think they’re all crazy paying what they do to binge on sport but they’re happy with what they do.

 I’ve though a lot about this in recent months and have come to the conclusion that pay for view is like a Big Mac while Freeview is more school dinners. I’m not going to labour this analogy suffice to say that set times meals with a varied diet is better for you than an all-day happy meal.

 

Bill 😊

I'm one of those blokes in the pub you speak to lol !

[Bill]

Well, my Netflix extension as expected only lasted a couple of weeks but at least Mrs Green managed to finish watching her series.

Sid

You say you’ll be downgrading your Virgin package but retaining their expensive top broadband why is that? Unless you’ve got the latest ultra-high definition 4K TV in every room and a gang of kids all doing online gaming (some families might do this) you just don’t need that level of bandwidth.

I told Virgin I was a hard-up pensioner and only needed broadband for email and a bit of forum use, so I wanted their minimum package. That turns out to be 100 meg which is twenty time more than you need to watch a HD film on Netflix and this dropped my price considerably. They’ll do their best to convince you that need it but that’s a load of old rubbish.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

i play a lot of games online so a high rate of bandwidth helps to stop excessive lag. even at the speed i have there is still some servers that lag a lot. it did not cost any extra at the time and i have been upgraded to the gig 1 and something else recently that put my upload speed into three figures. (just done a quick speed test and my download is about 340 mbps, which is down to my ageing pc and the upload is around 105 mbps)

i may just get rid of the tv altogether since Mrs sid passed away and keep the phone and broadband. not that i really need the phone as that is something else that i have used only twice this year.

with the money i save i may upgrade my pc. it is nine years old after all. is on its third psu and graphics card and new cpu cooling system but still chugging away merrily at present. so either a brand new one which does not have dvd slots or provision for adding extra internal drives or maybe a new mother board and processor.

[Bill]

As long as you have a virgin TV box they’ve got you. They’ll never offer you a competitive deal on just broadband because you’re using their TV box and broadband as a combined package. If you dump the TV like I did, then when it comes to the next renewal time, they then have to price match with others who will provide a broadband only deal. Get rid of your Virgin box!

When the wife put the telly on this morning we could only get a handful of channels. I stripped down and resoldered a few iffy joints in the Freeview box before realizing that the fault was due to a dead short inside the arial cable, most of which was buried in the wall. Five hours later and ten quid out of pocket we’re all back up and running again. Happy days.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

the telly downstairs is a 'normal' tv connected to a virgin box and an ariel on the roof so will pick up freeview when the virgin box gone.

the telly upstairs is a "smart" tv also connected to a separate ariel on the roof and to my hub. this i have problems with.

i had it connected via an ethernet cable directly to the hub no problem until they did a firmware update some months back. it no longer recognises the ethernet and will only connect to the hub via wifi. the other problem is that it now needs to be setup for country etc almost every time i turn it on. most annoying having to go through the menu every time.

have checked online and it seems to be a recurring theme with this make and model with no solution so far. but it does what i want it to do and for an hour a day i can put up with it.

[Bill]

That seems to be an all-too-common problem with smart TVs made for a global market where the latest updates might not be 100% compatible, especially as the TV becomes older. I gave up trying to use the smart functions on mine and instead I use a separate Freeview recorder box which doesn’t receive any updates. The aerial and internet cable plug into the back of it and it passes everything to the TV via the HDMI cable. I seem to remember it cost me about £160 for the box but at the time Virgin were charging me nearly £80/month so I’m quid’s in these days. 

I’m still with Virgin at the moment but I’ve dropped the landline and just pay them about £27 for the broadband. When my contract comes up for renewal next time, because I’m no longer tied to a their phone or TV subscription, they’ll have to match the offers of companies like Plus Net to retain my business so the price will drop further.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

roll on september virgin are in for a big loss on my contract.

in two mind whether to keep the landline or not.

just spent a chunk of money to update my pc and now the graphics card is revving like a formula one car. trouble is the cheapest one available in currys at present cost more than what i have spent on a mother board, processor and memory.

looks like trip to tenzy and see what he can do for me.

[Bill]

If the fans running flat out then the chances are that there’s a build up of crud between the vanes of the heatsink it’s trying to cool. Vacuuming the dust off the fan doesn’t really cut it, but I’d try a good blast with compressed air before spending any dosh. I have access to a suitable compressor if that helps.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

had the graphics cad out and used a soft brush to clean the fan and the heatsink as well as compressed air.

it is a weird one as sometimes it whirrs away madly and at others seems to pulse from fast to very fast.

if i physically stop the fan by just touching it briefly it will go back to being quiet and may stay like that for a couple of hours.

still it should only be for a few more days and then see what the new motherboard etc does. (may still need to get a new card though)...🤷‍♀️

[Bill]

If it’s not just running flat out all the time then it’s not muck. From what you describe it sounds more like a control issue which could be caused by a multitude of things. I’d have thought though that the temperature control / fan speed would be done by the graphic card itself rather than the mother board but I’m no expert when it comes to PCs.  

I’ve just had to add an additional fan to my solar charger. I’d changed the setup to put everything onto a PCB, but a power diode was getting stinking hot because the airflow from the main fan wasn’t reaching it with the new layout. It’s made it a bit noisy at the moment but when I’ve got a bit more time I’ll add some speed control to the second fan.

Cost me a tenner but better than keep replacing burnt out parts.  

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

well hopefully by the end of friday i will have my new system up and running.

surprisingly this morning it was just slightly noisy on startup and now it is down to a whisper, probably my ageing motherboard which has been working away tirelessly 12 hours per average day since about 2012 is the problem.

they don't last forever, mind you this one is giving it a good go, be due it's pension at this rate...

 

[Evil Sid]

After much fiddling about and having to go a buy yet another power supply my new upgrade is working sort of.

what i did not take into account was that replacing the motherboard would inactivate windows 10 or at least certain features such as being able to personalise the screen etc.

so todays task is to find where i got the windows ten from and reload it so that it recognises my new system. it still works but just not all the stuff that should.

only took about four hours...

[Confused52]

I took the hard drive across between machines initially then cloned the hard drive onto a larger drive afterwards. 

[Evil Sid]

cleared a lot of old progs from the c drive and loaded some onto an external drive. doing that i managed to free up quite a chunk of space.

managed to get the free version windows 10 from microsoft just plucking up the courage to run it.

laptop currently updating to the newer version of windows 10 been at it for about two hours.

 

[Bill]

Hope you managed to sort all your PC issues out Sid, and that your fan noise now isn’t driving you bonkers.

I tried adding some speed control to my fans. It quieted things down but the constant variation in speed each time the sun went behind a cloud was distracting. More importantly though, the high current switching of the speed control was disturbing all the sensor readings, so it had to go.  

Some things just aren’t meant to be, and it looks like this was one of them. 😕

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

well if it is not thing it's another.

everything working fine as regards the pc, apart from the windows 10 issue.

fan seems to be behaving even when playing a graphics intensive game.

However my latest glitch was the left hand speaker packing up. adjusting the volume got a scratchy crackle out of it, so tested the port with headphones, just in case, they worked fine in both front and rear ports.

so had to go and get another set of speakers. £30.00 well spent as the sound from them is great and a bonus they light up as well. six colour modes, rainbow mode, red blue or green, cycle through the colours and one that reacts to music.

took me an hour to figure out how to change modes, turns out it is a finger tap on the top of the right speaker.

will be leaving the windows 10 until weekend after i have sorted out where to scatter Mrs sid's ashes. might  see if landican cemetary will do it where her parents ashes are scattered.

[Bill]

When dealing with a problem where you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, I always find a complete break away for a while helps, then when you come back to it, the problem is usually staring you in the face. 🧐

 

Bill 😊