Pro Netflix trix
JUST SITTING DOWN AND BROWSING TITLES IN THE REGULAR NETFLIX APP IS FOR CHUMPS. UP YOUR NETFLIX GAME WITH THESE SIMPLE TIPS, SITES AND ADD-ONS.
MUCH AS IT has done in the rest of the world, Netflix has taken Australia by storm. As of June this year, it had 1,878,000 subscriptions in Australia — many more than Stan (332,000) and Presto (142,000) combined. According to Roy Morgan research, nearly a quarter of all Australians have access to Netflix.
And thanks to its popularity, there is a host of tools available to make Netflix viewing that much better. We’re going to walk through them this month — but first, we’re going to look at how you can better use the Netflix app or site itself.
Using the Netflix app USE PROFILES
This one seems obvious since it’s right there when you log in, so it’s surprising how many people fail to take advantage of it. Netflix lets you create up to five different profiles. Each profile has its own viewing history, gets its own recommendations, has its own playback settings, and has its own My List. A profile can be flagged as a Kids’ profile so that only child-appropriate content is listed, and you can select the preferred language for that person.
You should create a separate profile for each family member, and for everybody else to whom you’ve given your Netflix password (we know you’ve done it — we all do).
ADD PIN-BASED PARENTAL CONTROLS The ‘Kids’ profile limits its listings and
recommendations to appropriate content, but there’s actually nothing stopping your children from logging into your profile and accessing the full library. What you can do if this is a major concern is add a Parental Control pin that will need to be entered whenever more adult content is selected for viewing.
In a web browser, log onto netflix.com and click on your name then ‘Your Account’ on the top right. Under settings, select ‘Parental controls’ and enter your Netflix password.
There are four levels of content to choose from, depending on the threshold you want for the PIN. By default, the green bar is all the way to the right, which means that there is no threshold and the PIN is switched off. But if you click on the green bar at any point below Adult, it will turn the PIN on.
MANAGE YOUR BANDWIDTH WITH THE QUALITY SETTINGS
Binging seven seasons of Gilmore Girls in Full HD will be a brutal hit on even the most generous broadband plans. At full HD resolution, you’ll be using about 3GB per hour of viewing — 7GB if you go for 4K playback.
You can massively cut down on bandwidth usage by reducing the quality of the stream, however. Cut back to Medium/SD (DVD quality) and you’ll reduce bandwidth usage by a factor of four, to about 0.7GB/hour.
By default, Netflix uses the highest bitrate that your connection can sustain, but if you want to lower it to save bandwidth, head to the ‘Your Account settings’ as above and select ‘Playback Settings’ under your profile. These settings are attached to a profile, rather than global, so different users can have different settings (if you have a spare profile, you can
even set it up just for low-bandwidth-only watching).
ACCESS THE HIDDEN SETTINGS
If you really want fine control over your viewing settings, you can actually use the hidden menu. While watching something, press ‘Ctrl-Shift-Alt-S’ (or ‘Command-ShiftOption-S’ on Mac) to bring it up.
This menu lets you choose from a list of available bitrates for both audio and video — deselecting one will mean that Netflix will not use that bitrate when it’s trying to automatically adjust to your bandwidth. Deselecting all but one means that Netflix will use that bitrate.
EDIT YOUR VIEWING HISTORY
So you’ve got things that you’re not proud of watching, or you simply want Netflix to stop recommending stand-up comedy because you watched that one show with Aziz Ansari. Don’t worry — you can delete things from your viewing history.
Once again, go to the Your Account page and select ‘Viewing activity’. It will show you everything you’ve watched. To remove an item, just click on the ‘X’ next it — it will removed from your record within 24 hours.
Use online guides to plan your viewing (and see what’s on overseas)
Even in Australia, the Netflix library is quite large and undoubtedly contains a lot of content that never makes it to the front page recommendations. Likely, you’re missing out on a lot of stuff that you might otherwise like to see, if only you knew about it.
Online guides can help with this. They can provide recommendations based on community feedback, point you to hidden gems and keep to apprised of new releases. Some of our favourite include:
JUSTWATCH www.justwatch.com
JustWatch has a complete catalogue of all the content on Netflix in Australia (it also covers Stan and a number of other services as well), and you can browse by popularity or genre. Perhaps most usefully, you can click on Rating and set a minimum threshold for IMDB and/
or Rotten Tomatoes ratings — items below those levels won’t appear in the list. It’s also handily available as a mobile app.
STREAMLY www.streamly.com.au
Like JustWatch, Streamly is a multi-service aggregator that shows all Netflix, Stan and Foxtel Play content in a searchable and filterable list. You can organise by year or genre, though it does not have ratings yet.
WHAT’S NEW ON NETFLIX whatsnewonnetflix.tv
If you’re someone who uses a VPN or smart DNS service and wants to know what’s available in which country, this is the site for you. It contains a complete database of global Netflix content, broken down by country. It’s less useful now, since Netflix started blocking VPNs, but can still come in handy if you don’t mind hopping around servers looking for the one that’s still not blocked. It’s available as a mobile app called iStreamGuide.
WHAT’S ON NETFLIX whatsonnetflix.com
Like What’s New on Netflix, this is a catalogue of all the content coming and going in the various countries that Netflix services. Its greatest asset, however, is the secret genre codes at whatsonnetflix.com/netflix-hacks/ the-netflix-id-bible-every-category-onnetflix. This is a list of all the genre codes used by Netflix to form its recommendations. You can use these codes to browse very specific genres in the Netflix catalogue, just by going to the URL: www.netflix.com/browse/genre/ genrecode. For example, you can view ‘Asian action movies’ by heading to www.netflix. com/browse/genre/77232. The same codes are used worldwide, although the list of movies you get will depend on your location.
FLIX ROULLETTE netflixroulette.net
Can’t decide on what to watch? Let Flix Roullette decide for you. Available in website or app form, it fires up a random movie or TV show for you to watch. You can set some parameters if you want (like, say, choosing action movies), or just give it a spin and see. It will provide a direct link to Netflix for the movie selected.
FLIXTAPE flixtape.netflix.com
Flixtape is a service provided by Netflix itself, even though it’s not promoted on the main Netflix page and almost nobody knows about it. Flixtape lets you create your own Netflix ‘mixtape’ that you can share with other people — and access the mixtapes that other people have created. Unfortunately, making a precise mixtape is a little painful. What happens is you give the mixtape a name (‘The romance mixtape’) and Netflix tries to interpret that for you. You can edit, remove and add entries, but it can be tedious. Once you’ve created a mixtape, you can share via link, Facebook or Twitter.
Get the right plug-ins and online apps
If you’re willing to watch Netflix in a web browser (specifically Chrome), a whole world of new options is open to you. There are some great browser plugins that can really enhance the experience, available in the Chrome store.
WATCH WITH OTHERS WITH NETFLIX PARTY www.netflixparty.com
If you like the communal viewing experience but physically getting together is not an option, then Netflix party is for you. It allows you to sync the playback of two or more people over the internet and provides a chat window for your snarks as you watch.
With the plug-in running (every participant needs it), you’ll see a ‘Start the Party’ button appear when you select a Netflix video. Click on it, and it will give you a URL to send to your viewing buddies. When they open it, they will see what you’re seeing, with the video synchronised on all the screens. There’s a chat window on the right, with users identified only by icons. Depending on the choices of the party starter, only they can control playback, or anybody can.
As an aside, if you’re not a fan of Netflix Party, you can also try Showgoers ( showgoers.tv), another add-on with similar capabilities.
TWEAK THE NETFLIX BROWSER PLAYER WITH FLIX PLUS tinyurl.com/tla59-fplus
Put together by Lifehacker, Flix Plus adds ratings and options to Netflix that probably should have been there originally. It does a lot of little things: adds IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings to info pages, hides spoiler text and images from TV shows, adds custom keyboard controls, keeps My List at the top of the window and adds a button to watch random episodes of a selected TV show.
SHARE YOUR SCREEN WITH RABBIT www.rabb.it
Rabbit isn’t designed as a Netflix-specific tool, but it’s often used as one. It’s a video/text chat tool with an additional desktop sharing tool that’s good enough to support Netflix streaming (or YouTube, Crackle or other web-based streaming).
You can actually use Rabbit from a regular browser — just go to the home page and select ‘Start a Chat now’. You will get a virtual desktop in your browser and a launch page. You can click on the Netflix button and it will launch a browser-within-a-browser window form which you can log into Netflix and view streams. Then just click on the Invite button and Copy the room link. Send that link to another person, and they will see what you’re seeing.
FOILING THE NETFLIX GEOBLOCKS IT USED TO BE CHILD’S PLAY TO GET AROUND NETFLIX’S REGION-BASED CONTENT RESTRICTIONS, BUT THE COMPANY HAS BEEN CRACKING DOWN. IS IT STILL POSSIBLE, AND IF SO, HOW?
Ever since it started its streaming service, Netflix has deployed geoblocks. It detects which country you are in based on your IP address and limits your access to content based on its regional library.
In the past, this was relatively easy to circumvent with VPNs or smart DNS services and many people enjoyed getting access to the much larger US content library, as well as the specific libraries of other countries.
Last year, however, Netflix started blocking both VPN and smart DNS services, banning entire IP address ranges from accessing its service. Accessing the US Netflix library became a treasure hunt for that one VPN server that still wasn’t blocked, chasing rumours and legends on Reddit and generally being frustrated.
And that’s where we’re at right now. Most VPN services no longer work for Netflix, nor do many smart DNS services. It’s not that bad — the Australian content library has grown and the US library has actually shrunk, so you’re not missing out on as much as you used to. And if you really want to access the US library, there are still ways to do that. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse, but if you’re willing to play, you can win.
VPN PROVIDERS
A handful of VPN providers still promise to provide servers that can access the US Netflix library, if not other nations’. Based on our most recent tests, these providers can currently access Netflix (though remember, this is constantly in motion, and may change by the time you read this):
* Express VPN — www.expressvpn.com * NordVPN — nordvpn.com * StrongVPN — strongvpn.com * TorGuard — torguard.net * VanishedVPN — vanishedvpn.com * VyprVPN — www.goldenfrog.com
In every case listed above, you cannot just pick a random server in the country you want to access. You will have to talk to their customer service representatives and ask them which servers can currently access Netflix. Typically only a few of the hundreds available will be able to. Don’t worry, it won’t take long — the customer reps are used to fielding that question. (Presumably, they don’t list the Netflix-capable servers on their sites because Netflix would immediately block them and also because they’re constantly changing.)
If you sign up for any VPN based on advertised Netflix accessibility, make sure to take note of trial periods and money-back guarantees. You may need it.
SMART DNS SERVICE PROVIDERS
Smart DNS services use DNS trickery to fool streaming services into thinking that you’re in another country. They’re easier to set up and work on more devices than VPNs (since all you have to do is change a DNS server address), but aren’t as versatile.
Unfortunately, most of the Smart DNS service providers have simply failed to keep up with Netflix, and are in a state of virtual closure because of it. Even Getflix ( www.getflix.com.au) has quietly removed Netflix from its officially supported Channels page.
However, as of November, Getflix will still work for Netflix for some users, even though it’s not “officially” supported. It appears to be a bit of a lottery, and you may have to engage in some hard-core router configuration, but you may still be able to get it to work. You can always try the 14-day trail to see if it works for you.
SMART DNS SERVICES USE DNS TRICKERY TO FOOL STREAMING SERVICES INTO THINKING THAT YOU’RE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. THEY’RE EASIER TO SET UP AND WORK ON MORE DEVICES THAN VPNS, BUT AREN’T AS VERSATILE.