Our family
got up and running with our new Apple TV box and Netflix subscription last week,
and I can honestly say we’re very impressed.
It’s made
our TV an internet TV that can stream movies and programmes on demand. 
It’s enabled my iPhone (via a downloaded Airplay app) to talk to my telly so I can stream video, photos and music from my phone straight onto the TV. "Look kids, watch the video I just took of you on the big screen".
It’s opened up a whole new world of decent TV programmes like House of Cards and Breaking Bad. Who knew Netflix made such good original content? I’m three episodes in to House of Cards (a bit like a theatrical West Wing with Kevin Spacey) and I’m so excited to hear that the second series is about to be released exclusively to Netflix this Friday. That’s about 20 episodes of thrilling content to watch on these stormy winter nights. It’s like the old days of boxsets when I wanted to stay in all weekend and watch all the episodes back to back. Apart from now I have kids to look after, so sadly that's not a runner any more.
A big plus point is there’s
tons of kids stuff on Netflix – the kids will never complain of being bored
again when it’s lashing rain and they can’t play outside. There’s loads of Lego
movies for my eldest, a Mermaid show for my little girl and Thomas the
Tank engine movies for my 2 year old. Sorted!
I can even
stream catch-up-TV such as RTE Player through my iPhone – and watch YouTube clips
through the Apple TV. Naively, I expected a slow connection – and the spinning wheel of buffering death to appear quite often and impinge on my viewing – but guess what, once the programme has loaded (after only a few seconds of the spinning wheel), it’s high-definition free-flowing content. Not even a pixilated pause every now and again. You would never know it's streaming. It's amazing quality.
My most
favourite thing at the moment is the individual profiles I’ve set up for everyone in the house, so we can save all of our favourites and build up our own
preferences. This was Netflix comes back to us with more recommendations for each of
us, based on what we've already watched, and I can ensure that the kids only see content aimed at under 12s. I can update these settings and preferences via the iPhone Netflix app or via the Netflix website on
my laptop. It’s all so seemless and integrated.
I feel like
I’m living in the house of the future that they predicted on Tomorrow’s World
when I was a kid. 
All I need
now is: remote control curtains, a self-cleaning hoover and a front door that unlocks when I press a button....
Not far off living the dream...
Not far off living the dream...
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What do you watch on Netflix? Any recommendations>>?
Thanks for the article Amy. Netflix app is great on iPhone. If live outside USA, you can use tools like UnoTelly to get American Netflix on your iPhone.
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