Tag Archive for: Netflix

Complaints about Streaming Services Surge!

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So, you have been spending lots of time on your favorite streaming services whilst on lockdown. Things have gotten quite tough finding various activities to keep yourself busy. While there is a lot of things to watch online, your favorite services don’t always work the way that you want them to. So we do what we Brits do best and complain.

Due to a surge in screen time, complaints about streaming services has also surged. According to a Media Nations Report, posted recently by Ofcom, a total of 40% of UK Adults are now spending their waking day watching TV and online video services.This is as a result of the lockdown that’s been imposed on many of us lately.

It has not been all plain sailing though.

The Bandwidth Britain Report from Uswitch has found the streaming services which use the most bandwidth are also causing the biggest disruption to our lockdown box set binges.

The research team took the most popular streaming services in the UK and revealed the ones that are the most unreliable. So, how is this done you may wonder? Well it’s calculated by the number of times that we have gone to Google to complain about them:  “Netflix not working”, “Now TV not working”.

Complaints Score

So they ranked the most Complained About Streaming Services in the UK according to a complaints score:

  • Netflix – 8,300
  • Now TV – 5,020
  • BBC iplayer – 2,510
  • Apple TV – 1,570
  • Sky on Demand – 1,030
  • All 4 – 830
  • Amazon Prime Video – 820
  • Hayu – 500
  • Disney+ – 480
  • Britbox – 310

Netflix unsurprisingly topped the list as the UK’s most complained about streaming app during lockdown. As it had a complaint score of 8,300. It’s not surprising because it’s bad. Far from it. We love it! But Netflix is the most popular streaming app, so of course it’s going to have a larger number of people complaining about it. Now TV came in second with a 5,020 complaint score.

While Britbox found itself at the opposite end of the scale with the study revealing it had just 310 on the complaints score.

(USwitch)

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Netflix

Netflix Gave Away 83 Year Subscription!

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Netflix recently gave away an 83 year subscription! Yes you read that right, an 83 YEAR subscription. So basically you’ll never have to pay for Netflix again. To promote the new Charlize Theron Film The Old Guard, they held a gaming tournament. With the prize being the basically lifelong subscription.

To win, all you needed to do was to be amazing at the original video game of The Old Guard. The task? To beat everyone and by the number 1 gamer by the end of a weekend a couple of weeks ago.

Netflix described the prize as an ‘immortal’ subscription of 1,000 months. Which is 83 and a third years.

The game was a ‘browser-based, top-down beat em up”. You’ll be  playing as Charlize’s character, Andromache of Scythia.

Originally, in the comics, Andromache was the oldest in the gang of immortals. She uses a double-bladed axe called the Labrys to hack and slash her way to victory.

The Netflix film is about immortality, so even if you die in the game, you’ll just move slower, which would have made it difficult to get the top score.

While the competition has now ended, you can still enjoy the game! So, go ahead and play it, why not!

The game is available here!

(Gizmodo)

The game will be available here from 4pm today (Friday 17th July). Good luck.

Listen to the guys chatting about it here!

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Netflix Shuffle

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The Netflix Shuffle! Netflix have seemingly looked to introduce a ‘shuffle’ button that’ll queue up a TV episode completely at random. This new feature will be particularly helpful for those that spend hours at a time looking for something to watch. Rather than actually watching something. So, the option is only available on a few TV shows and is available via a ‘Random Episode’ button.

However it is only noticed by a few users and according to the New York Post it is currently in the ‘second round of testing’ after it was first trialled last year. Furthermore it is only available on Android and Amazon Fire TV versions of the Netflix app. The streaming giant is said to be gathering feedback on the feature and will then decide if it will be made available to the rest of us.

It seems to be getting great feedback online however!

https://twitter.com/brookESTaylorxx/status/1284055233811951616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1284055233811951616%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmetro.co.uk%2F2020%2F07%2F17%2Fnetflix-testing-shuffle-button-who-cant-decide-what-watch-13002563%2F

This new feature follows one of Netflix’s most annoying features. Finally allowing people to remove movies/TV shows from the ‘Continue Watching” Row!

You can now click on the title card and the option to ‘Remove From Row’ should appear at the bottom!

Finally!

(Metro)

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The Power of Creativity With Adobe Stock Audio w/ Dev and Nick Bright

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Netflix Money

Netflix cost us ALL a lot of money during lockdown!

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So we all spent a ridiculous amount of money on Netflix during lockdown. According to research by USwitch Our Netflix binges cost over £2BN in global energy usage. The exact number spent on electricity to power Netflix is £2,120,503,521.30. That’s ALOT of money. The data uses global costs per KWh and average energy consumption to calculate the cost of 2 hours of watching per day. The UK has the second highest cost for a country at £245,873,114.79, behind the USA at £788,546,852.28.

Furthermore it has been discovered that it costs on average £22.20 per person to watch Netflix in the UK per year. However, lockdown may have increased the time we spend watching. This is the 10th highest cost per person in the world! While, Orange Is The New Black is the most expensive show to watch by energy usage, with the UK spending £121,302,434.51 in total to watch all 7 seasons

Netflix Consumption Costs Per Country:

Energy costs per KWh and subscriber numbers differ between countries; the table below shows the top 10 countries by total Netflix cost:

Country # of Subscribers Annual Cost (Country)
1 United States 60,103,000 £788,546,852.28
2 United Kingdom 11,073,894 £245,873,114.79
3 Germany 5,774,730 £192,324,062.18
4 Brazil 9,624,550 £126,273,374.16
5 Spain 4,529,200 £109,703,564.88
6 France 5,661,500 £108,560,819.41
7 Japan 3,707,463 £82,316,615.62
8 Canada 7,133,490 £79,192,260.90
9 Netherlands 3,328,962 £60,474,090.14
10 New Zealand 2,264,600 £45,709,818.70

Cost Per Subscribers

The cost per person is dictated by the cost per KWh of electricity in the country and the total number of Netflix subscribers.

The table below shows the top 10 countries by per-person cost:

Country # of Subscribers Annual Cost (Per Person)
1 Denmark 927,354 £34.31
2 Germany 5,774,730 £33.30
3 Belgium 894,731 £28.26
4 Italy 1,585,220 £27.25
5 Ireland 283,075 £26.24
6 Portugal 248,010 £26.24
7 Spain 4,529,200 £24.22
8 Austria 645,411 £23.21
9 United Kingdom 11,073,894 £22.20
10 Japan 3,707,463 £22.20

Netflix Cost Per Shows

Based on the cost per KWh in each country, the number of viewers of each show** and the length of five of the most watched shows of 2019 in hours, we can see how much each country spent watching each show:

Country Orange is the New Black You Umbrella Academy Dead To Me Stranger Things
United States £389,032,582.88 £25,397,617.34 £16,823,529.36 £6,007,671.06 £23,618,963.97
United Kingdom £121,302,434.51 £7,919,112.56 £5,245,666.19 £1,873,223.88 £7,364,518.95
Germany £94,883,806.14 £6,194,397.86 £4,103,205.15 £1,465,251.81 £5,760,589.98
Brazil £62,297,448.47 £4,067,028.90 £2,694,023.58 £962,034.02 £3,782,205.54
Spain £54,122,670.17 £3,533,346.38 £2,340,509.18 £835,794.26 £3,285,898.03
France £53,558,892.35 £3,496,540.68 £2,316,128.87 £827,088.07 £3,251,669.92
Japan £40,611,214.79 £2,651,264.03 £1,756,212.70 £627,142.38 £2,465,589.93
Canada £39,069,802.53 £2,550,634.41 £1,689,555.06 £603,338.98 £2,372,007.64
Netherlands £29,835,121.93 £1,947,757.19 £1,290,205.68 £460,731.58 £1,811,351.29
New Zealand £22,551,112.57 £1,472,227.66 £975,212.16 £348,247.61 £1,369,124.18
Italy £21,310,801.38 £1,391,255.14 £921,575.49 £329,093.99 £1,293,822.35
Poland £17,874,071.97 £1,166,891.57 £772,955.76 £276,021.98 £1,085,171.48
Sweden £16,664,414.30 £1,087,920.23 £720,644.69 £257,341.73 £1,011,730.68
Denmark £15,698,962.09 £1,024,891.61 £678,894.16 £242,432.65 £953,116.10
Belgium £12,473,748.70 £814,336.67 £539,421.34 £192,627.00 £757,306.80
Switzerland £8,637,078.11 £563,863.32 £373,506.34 £133,378.86 £524,374.68
Finland £8,083,292.75 £527,709.98 £349,558.16 £124,826.98 £490,753.24
Austria £7,391,127.14 £482,522.61 £319,625.78 £114,138.15 £448,730.45
India £7,216,356.02 £471,112.85 £312,067.89 £111,439.23 £438,119.74
Colombia £6,515,020.01 £425,326.80 £281,738.95 £100,608.79 £395,540.19
Ireland £3,664,555.79 £239,236.99 £158,471.98 £56,590.24 £222,482.68
Portugal £3,210,620.80 £209,602.29 £138,841.77 £49,580.30 £194,923.36
Peru £2,697,115.45 £176,078.58 £116,635.48 £41,650.45 £163,747.40
Chile £2,577,028.74 £168,238.84 £111,442.38 £39,796.00 £156,456.69
Turkey £1,982,436.08 £129,421.43 £85,729.51 £30,613.95 £120,357.75
Romania £970,888.83 £63,383.54 £41,985.63 £14,993.04 £58,944.65
South Africa £774,229.80 £50,544.85 £33,481.20 £11,956.11 £47,005.08
Greece £699,477.34 £45,664.70 £30,248.57 £10,801.74 £42,466.70
Argentina £452,150.01 £29,518.18 £19,553.01 £6,982.37 £27,450.95

Research

Speaking of the research, Sarah Broomfield, energy expert at Uswitch said:

“Lockdown has almost certainly impacted global spend on home energy and people will be thinking more about how the small things they do to use electricity in their home contributes to the bigger picture when it comes to their annual bills.

“Noting that energy costs are so different around the world, we wanted to explore the relative cost of common activities to understand how those differences impact us on a practical level.

“We encourage home energy users to regularly review their energy bills to identify any savings and to compare energy prices annually to ensure they’re getting the best deal possible.”

—

Methodology:

The global cost of Netflix electricity was calculated by energy market analysts at Uswitch, the comparison and switching service.

The global cost per KWh was taken from the World Energy Council; this was then applied to the energy use requirements of common household items as defined by the Centre of Sustainable Energy.

The cost of powering a television was then applied to the average Netflix consumption of 2 hours per day, which gave a cost per person based on the country’s cost of electricity. This was then multiplied by subscriber numbers per country, as sourced from Netflix, to calculate the total cost per country per year.

Uswitch’s World Powers report is a study of the global cost of energy applied to common household activities to provide a clearer picture of the relative impact of energy cost differences around the world; the full study can be found at https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/world-powers/.

The research from Uswitch comprises data relating to a range of common household activities including charging a laptop, boiling a kettle and topping up an electric vehicle. The full study can be found at https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/world-powers/.

**Netflix doesn’t publish country-specific viewer figures, so USwitch took global viewer figures and multiplied them by the percentage of total subscribers in that country to calculate the number of viewers per country.

—

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Britain’s Biggest Bandwidth Hogs

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So how has the UK spent lockdown? It seems as though Britain has hit the sofa to stream more content than ever before! Official figures from the ONS highlight how much bandwidth Britain has used in comparison to 2015.

The ONS Study found that the most popular activity was to stream video content. The survey determined that it took up 2 hours and 53 minutes each day. USwitch also discovered that the UK Broadband usage had increased by almost a third overall (29%). That’s A LOT of bandwidth usage!

However, a recent poll by YouGov discovered that 35% of broadband users in the UK have slower than normal speeds during lockdown! So the question is, how much bandwidth is the UK using and how is it affecting the quality of our connections?

Revealing the UK’s Top Broadband Issues

During the lockdown there has been an increase in the usage of UK broadband connections. Which will in effect take up a lot of bandwidth. 1 in 5 households (21%) have suffered with dropped connections. Including buffering or slow connections.

So therefore our friends over at USwitch took to Reddit to research:

  • What the most common complaints were when it comes to broadband connections

  • How often the UK searches Google for a solution to these issues

  • Where in the country suffers the most with internet problems

Technical complaints toppled the list of broadband issues that people had. While Broadband speed was the top issue affecting those in Norwich. Googling for a speedy solution more than anywhere else in the UK. Improving latency was the top issue in Cambridge. As they were fed up with having to wait for their connections to respond.

USwitch discovered a number of customer service related complaints such as Switch Broadband Provider and Cancel Broadband was the most prevalent in Glasgow!

Top 10 Bandwidth Hungry Apps Revealed

Bandwidth is a hot commodity and a lot of your apps take up a lot of it! Netflix even applied restrictions on streaming quality to reduce the amount of bandwidth used in order to help video run smoothly. USwitch discovered that Netflix used around 1GB of bandwidth data at standard definition, per hour!

Furthermore Google Stadia and NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW used LOADS of bandwidth! With Google Stadia raking in 4.5gb of bandwidth per hour!

What is cloud gaming and why does it use so much bandwidth?

Cloud gaming requires gamers to play games which are streamed via the cloud. This is done via a data centre which provides the computing power. Every single thing a gamer does is communicated between them and the data center. Therefore this is why so much bandwidth is required and used during play.

Where do the UK’s Biggest Bandwidth Users Live?

The study by USwitch discovered that Southampton was the location that saw the biggest surge in broadband usage. Jumping 49% to 44 hours 36mins a week during lockdown. While which area in the UK uses the most bandwidth hungry apps?

Our study named Southampton as the UK location experiencing the biggest surge in broadband use – jumping 49% to 44 hours and 36 minutes a week during lockdown, but which area in the UK is using the most bandwidth-hungry apps?

The UK’s Most Used Apps During Lockdown

The average household has 8 devices which connect to the internet. USwitch discovered how much bandwidth do our most used apps eat up per hour?

Revealed: The Winners and Losers of Lockdown Entertainment

Video Calls Winner — Zoom

Video calling has a had a HUGE surge in popularity. 2/3’s of consumers 68% have said that they used the tech since the lockdown began. With Zoom being the biggest app with the highest search increase in the UK.

Plus it only uses 0.54gb’s per hour. Making it one of the least bandwidth hungry video calling apps. With Google Hangouts using the most at 0.70gb’s

Films and Box Sets Winner — Hulu

Suprisingly Hulu is the most popular video streaming service. 49% of searches for it since the lockdown. While Hulu isn’t available in the UK yet, it seems many could still access the content. Apple TV was a close second with 44% of people tuning in. Suprisingly Disney+ and Netflix were much further down the list! As they only had a third more searches than usual.

Amazon Prime hits bottom spot with 0.1% increase in searches. Maybe this is because many of us have those services anyway? Or maybe we’ve watched everything and are looking for new sources.

Catch-up TV Winner — My5

My5 tops the list when it comes to streaming catch up tv! With 100% more people searching for the service than before lockdown. Coming in 2nd was All4 with 46% more searches and BBC iPlayer had 19% more.

Music Streaming Winner — Apple Music

Apple Music had a 40% more increase in searches. The streaming quality could have knocked Spotify off the top spot. Streaming Spotify has 0.04gbs of data per hour of usage. With Apple Music uses 1gb of data as it’s a higher standard.

(USwitch)

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Streaming

Streaming: Who’s Winning the war?

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The lockdown has caused a lot of us to be either sitting down and playing video games or streaming our favourite shows on our prefered streaming services. Or on more than one if you  are subscribed to more than one service. But which one of them is doing the best? Out of all of us, which streaming platform do we as a collective like the most?

To no one’s suprise really, the use of streaming services has increased during the pandemic. Netflix has profited from the pandemic with the most significant increase of +332%. Disney Plus followed with a 290% increase of usage on JustWatch. You can see the rise of each of the different streaming services below:

  • Streaming Service
  • Netflix
  • Disney Plus
  • Amazon Prime Video
  • Hulu
  • +% Increase since March 17th
  • 332%
  • 290%
  • 266%
  • 259%

So, are you surprised that Netflix is coming out on top? Did you think the giant that is Disney would have taken Netflix’s crown? Let us know what you think by contacting us via our socials! @howtokillanhour across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!

Source: JustWatch.com

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Netflix vs Disney

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Netflix’s share price rose just a tad last week to make the 22year old company more valuable than Disney. While Disney has been around for almost a century. At it’s peak, Netflix’s market cap was close to touching $200BN! (data from Koyfin). Netflix Vs Disney is on!

However, those share prices have reversed slightly to see Disney retake it’s crown. Though, considering towards the end of 2019, Disney was worth almost 2x as much as Netflix. So it’s very surprising to see a shift in fortunes in a short space of time.

You could argue that it’s the coronavirus being the reason for this. Netflix recently announced that it had gained a massive 16M new subscribers over the last quarter. While Disney have had to close it’s parks and furlough thousands of workers. Even have had to push back film releases. Disney+ however seems to be doing well, even though it represents a tiny portion of Disney’s revenue’s and profits.

Netflix may come back on top, but that could all come down to how long lockdown is. Though, other platforms such as Quibi may want to take a piece of the pie….

Quibi

Launching a brand new streaming platform whilst everyone is at home during a global pandemic may be a good thing. However, for Quibi, a content provider designed for people on the go, who want a 10 minute episode whilst on the commute, it may be different.

Quibi is short for “Quick Bites” and they raised $2BN from investors before even having a single user. Therefore making it one of the msot funded startups pre-launch of all time. They’re trying to break the mold and be different, original and unique. The ability to watch your phone in landscape or portrait certainly highlights that as the content will dynamically adjust depending on how you watch.

Global Stats

Based on data from JustWatch, for 66 countries Netflix is the market leader in 61 of them. While Prime Video has the lead in Germany, Austria and India. Furthermore BluTV is leading in Turkey and iQiyi in China. (Note Netflix is unavailable in China)

 

Netflix vs Disney – Quibi Enters the fold

Quibi debuted at number 4 in the app store. But has since plummeted to outside the top 100.

Their socials aren’t great either 190K on Instagram is great, but there’s an account about an egg that has 6.7M and charts get 196K. So considering the funding, you’d expect more followers.

However, there is some good news. The apps ratings are great! More than half of the 2500 ratings are 5 stars and there’s little 1 star ratings.

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Episode 351 How Long Will The Bog Roll Last?

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Facebook

Facebook / Instagram lower video quality in EU!

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Following YouTube and Netflix’s decisoin to lower video quality to help European networks deal with demand, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook and Instagram will also temporarily reduce video bitrates in Europe. Therefore helping to handle “bandwidth constraints” and keep people in touch.

The sheer audience sizes of Facebook and Instagram could cause additional strain of users are more active than usual. Facebook had 288M daily users in Europe as of Summer 2019. With many users turning to video chat to keep in touch with people they’d otherwise meet in person.

With the news of reducing video bitrates it might help people work from home and otherwise get the internet services they expect.

“To help alleviate any potential network congestion, we will temporarily reduce bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in Europe. We are committed to working with our partners to manage any bandwidth constraints during this period of heavy demand, while also ensuring people are able to remain connected using Facebook apps and services during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

(Engadget)

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