September 11 (unfortunately, it has been an easy date to remember) is my bill date with Netflix, so this Sunday is when I lose my streaming+disc privileges. I made the change to streaming only over the phone this morning, because I wanted to ask a few questions. The young lady was very nice (as they almost always are at NF customer service), and offered to extend the number of days I could keep outstanding discs (I have been on the 3-disc plan over the summer) before getting charged a pretty hefty per-disc-fee. This will allow us to watch the last 3 discs of Season 2 of Breaking Bad, which we have but wont have time to watch until sometime next week (we have been working real hard to get to the point where we would have discs 2-4 at home before we had to make the switchover, so this is gratifying).
I also finally got a definitive answer about my main question regarding this switch - how many simultaneous streams can we get with stream only? One reason we went to the 3 disk plan for the summer was to get reliable access to three simultaneous streams (with 1 disk you are only guaranteed 1 stream, though you can often get 2 simultaneous streams). With my kids back in school we have almost no need for this now, but I have been interested to find if there was any way to get or pay for more simultaneous streams now that the discs are not tied to the streaming plans. Answer - not really. But she said that what a lot of people do is just sign up for a second stream-only plan (using a different email address). This would give you access to 2 simultaneous streams (and often, probably, 4), for $16.00, which I think is less than what I was paying for the 3 streams (though, also for 3 discs). I know there is still a lot of bitching and gnashing of teeth about this, but my experience is that Netflix just gave me a price cut. I was always going to go back to 1 disk + streaming in September, and with the exception of the Christmas holiday period, we almost only ever used that last year for streaming purposes. The only exception was that my son and I got into watching Voyager, and would try to watch a disc every week or two - but now that all of that is streaming (with, I am told, DS9 to come online soon) we really wont miss the 1 disc much. On another note, we have now pretty much made the adjustment to Comcast Cable. There are still elements of DirecTV that I look back on with nostalgia. The Comcast DVR sucks compared with my old TiVo for DirecTV (but is better than the DirecTV DVR, especially now that we know how to switch tuners). I have now confirmed that there is no way to schedule daily recordings of a program like the Daily Show at any time other than its initial showing, so once the new season starts I am going to have to manually record a week's worth of TDS/CR every Sunday evening. The On Demand controls also suck compared to DVR controls, but it does make a lot of material available, and we have been digging that (it got me into Louie, which I was aware of but never got around to watching - wow, that is a good program, and the 2 parter with the ducks and the USO show kicked serious ass - it got me to looking it up on the net and learning more about it). I will see this sunday what their RedZone is like, and if it eases the pain of losing the NFL package. One of the things I do miss is the Dan Patrick Show - I can get the last hour on my regional sports channel, but that is delayed, and not there when I want it, which is in the morning while getting up and ready for work. Also, it took me a while to realize that On Demand, even though we usually access it through a special button, is not really like accessing an archive of recordings on the DVR (which is how the sales person described it to me), but requires tuning to a special channel. This means that you can not watch an On Demand program while recording two other programs. But for the most part we are happy with Comcast, especially because we are saving about $70/month over previous services from DIrecTV and AT&T, with access to all of the premium channels, and all of their HD channels, which we did not have before (plus the money I am saving not paying for the NFL package - or the NBA package if the lockout continues). I guess that savings will last for 2 years (somewhat decreased in year 2), and of course, now we have a clear signal on every channel, something we had lost on about half of the DirecTV channels. My kids also think its cool when we can see who is calling the land-line on our TV screen. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
