• Tag Archives netflix
  • Various Ways to Watch A Movie

    Fall                                              Waxing Harvest Moon

    When I workout, on my treadmill 5-6 days a week, I watch movies.  That means I need a source of movies since I can go through 2-3 in an average week.  I used Comcast for a while, with their movies on demand, but the cable box won’t let me.  I’ve swapped it out twice with no joy and had a comcast person come by the house and offer to set up a service call.  I took him up on the offer, but no one showed up.  I still have the service, in part because they also provide a reasonably good internet connection, though it’s slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world.  I bought movies for a while, but that was expensive and I had to buy a lot.  Blockbuster and I shared many transactions, but that required physically going to the store and remembering to return stuff on time.  My current solution is netflix.  They mail me movies, I watch them and mail them back.  Pretty easy.

    Netflix also has a service which allows you to watch movies over the internet if you have a properly configured device.  Upstairs, where Kate’s Wii sits, I long ago connected with our wireless router and happily watch movies up there without mailing, buying or stopping somewhere.  A while back I began looking at the Playstation 3 because it has a blu ray DVD player and the capacity for wireless link up.  The Wii is not blu-ray.  So, I ponied up the cash and bought one for downstairs.

    It took the better part of 3 hours to get it connected to the internet, get permission to stream the Netflix movies and configure the blu ray remote I purchased.  It took so long because computers are, in essence, stupid things that only do exactly what they’re told and if you miss a beat on a password, a step in a process, or don’t wait long enough for a particular action, nothing happens and you have to start over.  I know this from years of handling electronics in various forms, still I dithered, shuffling my desktop with a password over to the Playstation, then back to the desktop to finally write down the password I’d not remembered quite correctly.  And so on.

    Still.  I got it done.  Now I can watch movies from a broad selection with minimal hassle.  It’s important to keep in mind when mumbling through the set up of some electronic device that the time it will save way more than compensates for the groaning and moaning, so it’s worth it.  I keep telling myself that.