You’ve heard of the expression ‘the gift that keeps on giving’ right? No Trevor, that is NOT a reference to a soap dispenser. I am talking about Netflix of course. I absolutely love the service and it takes at least 10 hours of my weekly time (when I have free time that Kervyn isn’t trying to take away from us, that is). The media streaming giant is obviously not content with just stealing every spare second of your home time though. No, now they want your outside spare time too! Damn them for being awesome.
As the service has grown, so have their ideas, and their latest feature truly is brilliant. Plan on going on vacation and know the kids won’t give a stuff about bird watching? Not a problem! Know you will be trapped on an airplane with some over-sized passenger snoring next to you and your only distraction is Under Siege 2? Fear not people! If you own a tablet or cellphone and have a subscription to the Netflix service you can now start downloading shows. I know – mind blowing.
Netflix has certainly come a long way since they started sending DVDs in the post to your address. This offline mode is something that subscribers have actually been asking for for ages. Why? Because not everybody can live in first-world countries where you have high-speed WiFi coverage everywhere you go.
What’s on offer?
However, that doesn’t mean the download option is available for everything right now. At the moment there are some brilliant options that stand out, mainly for Netflix’s own productions like Narcos, The Crown and Orange is the New Black. There are other titles, all grouped together nicely in the new “Available For Download” menu, and I am sure that more will roll out as Netflix slowly destroys its competition.
To test it out ourselves, I managed to trap Kervyn for a short time, using honey-coated glue sticks, and ordered him to download something. He decided The Crown was his best bet as it reinforces the delusion of power he wields madly on a daily basis. So turning his phone on he booted up Netflix, scrolled through to The Crown and hit DOWNLOAD. It didn’t take long* until the 57-min-long episode was saved to his phone and weighed in at just 240 MB. That is actually not that bad!
[Note: You will need to have the latest version of the Netflix app on Android and iOS devices for the Download option to appear]Damn fine I say! I probably won’t use it, as I have no social life, what about you? Would you use it? I am sure that more and more of your favourite shows will become available and that makes me happy. I do wonder at the piracy issue though.
*Depending on your connection speed
Last Updated: December 1, 2016
Filmmaker
December 1, 2016 at 14:39
I prefer streaming and hard copy. But worth a try, surely