Streaming services again

[unixman]

Wanting to indulge in a little on-demand, and eschewing the torrent crimes offered by my Pi2/OSMC setup, I just signed up to Blink Box, an old favourite of CUKers. Marvelous, I thought.

Here is the bad news they tell you after you sign up, but which is not mentioned on their web site or in any review as far as I know. New movies are for sale only (£9.99, keep it "forever"), and not available for rent (£3.49). The rental option becomes available when the film is released on DVD. When will that be ? Dunno. The UI doesn't trouble to mention it.

Sigh. Has this always been the case ? It wasn't mentioned in the latest CUK debate:

http://forums.contractoruk.com/gener...atches-tv.html

Speaking if the Blinkbox UI, it's awful. You want a list of available films? Can't have one. List with small thumbnails ? No. "Just show me what I can rent today" ? No. You will browse very big, random tiles. After much scrolling, with your eyes darting about like two files on an old piece of meat, you get to the bottom. Where you will be ordered to load up 20 or so more tiles. Oh and about half of this content is "buy only", see above.

There's a search box!. Let's try looking for Django Unchained. There it is!!!! ...available for buy only, £6.99. Well they obviously didn't release the DVD yet, even though I bought it in the local news agents last month for £4.99. Good film BTW.

Sorry for the ramble-rant.

[unixman]

I have GOT to be less of a Victor Meldrew. Leaving the current gig will help. Now where's that late summer bench thread...

[MicrosoftBob]

Use Kodi for all your film streaming goodness

[TykeMerc]

Use Kodi for all your film streaming goodness

Seconded. Also TV series and sport.
I even have it running very happily on an Android tablet for portability.

Binned Sky off in June and not missed it one bit. I occasionally look to see what I would be missing on Sky Movies and I've either watched it, started watching and binned it or couldn't care less for it. I've a bit of a taste for old movies and there's only one or two that I've failed to find on Kodi and that's probably because I didn't try hard enough.

[d000hg]

This rent Vs buy mess seems to be the same across Blinkbox, Sky and PSN stores. All pretty annoying - we end up searching all these (plus Netflix) sometimes trying to see if a specific film is rentable.

And yes, Blinkbox UI isn't very nice.

I'm not aware of a service/website which will help you find who is renting which movies, it would be nice.

[unixman]

Use Kodi for all your film streaming goodness

Thanks Bob, As mentioned I've actually got OSMC (ie Kodi) running on Pi2 complete with those naughty plugins that do real time bittorrent. However I want to be legit and pay for my stuff. OSMC/Kodi runs lovely and quick on Pi2. What a nice piece of software.

Interesting from d000hg about the rent/buy mess. Not good news. I would go Netflix but I'm more interested in recent (ish) films.

[d000hg]

I guess licensing affects most vendors the same, other than those who have an exclusivity period.

It does seem very silly you can buy the film months before you can rent it... do they just do this as a way to jack up the price? If so I'd rather they just charge a "new release premium" and be honest about it.

[TykeMerc]

I guess licensing affects most vendors the same, other than those who have an exclusivity period.

It does seem very silly you can buy the film months before you can rent it... do they just do this as a way to jack up the price? If so I'd rather they just charge a "new release premium" and be honest about it.

That has always been the case back to the VHS days when rental shops were a common sight, rental release was weeks to months after it was available on sale. It is to encourage the sales figures and those matter a lot to the studios, not forgetting the revenue which is massive compared to the production cost.

[stek]

iTunes/AppleTV works for us especially when your better half finds a clothes peg too technical.

The 'old' AppleTV is now £45 I believe, pending the new release, films to rent or buy, usually a choice of SD/HD, cool remote well worth fondling, what's not to like?

[TykeMerc]

iTunes/AppleTV works for us especially when your better half finds a clothes peg too technical.

The 'old' AppleTV is now £45 I believe, pending the new release, films to rent or buy, usually a choice of SD/HD, cool remote well worth fondling, what's not to like?

If you're not an Apple fanboi, quite a lot.