I'm considering getting Netflix but I have one question. I know with an iPhone or iPad you can stream movies and shows but I have a wifi only iPad and no wifi at work. Is there any way to cache a movie on my iPad for offline viewing? Thanks for any help.
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Netflix viewing offline?
- Thread starter deimos256
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The purpose of netflix is to allow online streaming of a good chunk of their content. There's no way (maybe in the jailbreak community) to buffer and store the entire show/movie to allow for offline viewing. Your best bet is to stream where you can, buy and rip to your iPad if need be.
If everyone could save netflix content then there'd be little reason to buy DVDs.
If everyone could save netflix content then there'd be little reason to buy DVDs.
Well that's not a huge deal because I can just use my iPhone. One more question, say I took my iPad to my girlfriends could I hook my iPad up to the tv and stream to my iPad? I read that trying to play movies from an iPad on a tv gets blocked or is that only iTunes content?
I frequently stream netflix on my ipad connected to my tv, or other people's tv. The wifi or network connection can cause issues, but generally it's satisfactory.
TEMPORARYILY cache?
I disagree, since I am paying for the ability to stream this content to my device, I don't see the harm in letting me cache it within the netflix app, for a short period of time, say, 7 days to start watching it, then 24 hours to finish it once you press play.
The only issue would be the bandwidth speed. That's the trick with streaming, you can dynamically change the datarate of the video/audio based on the speed of the connection. If one were to "rent" a video from Netflix Streaming, then I would assume download it at the highest quality, which would take a longer time to download, and more data would be transfered, which could cost Netflix and/or your ISP an extra $0.00001/year. They could just limit the quality/file size.
Adding this feature to the Netflix app would not take much time to code, but it would be a useful feature that would not gain them much money, so they won't do it. The app is slow, and the interface (browsing) is crap to begin with, but people still pay the service fees. So why would they waste the man power giving us something we aren't complaining about, and are seemingly happy with?
I disagree, since I am paying for the ability to stream this content to my device, I don't see the harm in letting me cache it within the netflix app, for a short period of time, say, 7 days to start watching it, then 24 hours to finish it once you press play.
The only issue would be the bandwidth speed. That's the trick with streaming, you can dynamically change the datarate of the video/audio based on the speed of the connection. If one were to "rent" a video from Netflix Streaming, then I would assume download it at the highest quality, which would take a longer time to download, and more data would be transfered, which could cost Netflix and/or your ISP an extra $0.00001/year. They could just limit the quality/file size.
Adding this feature to the Netflix app would not take much time to code, but it would be a useful feature that would not gain them much money, so they won't do it. The app is slow, and the interface (browsing) is crap to begin with, but people still pay the service fees. So why would they waste the man power giving us something we aren't complaining about, and are seemingly happy with?
Even if Netflix wanted you to be able to cache content for a short period, the content owners would never allow it.
That is a shame, because I spend 4 hours a day on a train with sketchy to non-existent network availability, and it sure would be nice to catch up on some of my Netflix backlog.
I have never tried this, but I am wondering if you could stream a NF movie and use a screen capture utility to save a local copy of the movie? Not sure how the quality would be though.
Very doable. The quality will be equal to the quality it is streaming assuming a decent video capture device. Note that this is illegal.
I did not mean using a hardware device. I meant using QT or similar to just make a video of what is being displayed on the screen.
I was referring to software when I said that..probably shouldn't have put device at the end...
Yes you can do this using QT and the quality will be almost identical (if saved in full) to what you see (with a huge file size). However, as mentioned earlier, this is illegal unless you have written consent from the publisher allowing this.
Netflix is online viewing only. I've had it for 2 years now and day by day I hate it more as their content isn't the best out there. That's me though, may not apply to you.