Mobile Movies with Netflix & Hulu Plus
Netflix has been available for the iPhone & Android Devices with full video streaming for some time now. The, marvels of technology astound me to no end. The iPhone’s crystal clear 960×640 high-res screen makes, viewing video a blast, even though Netflix doesn’t offer that high of quality video. Hopefully they will, start offering high res video once AT&T and Verizon start using 4G on a widespread scale. The iPhone 4S, which released on October 2011, will make great use of Netflix with its higher resolution screen, (1024×768) and retina display.
If you already have a Netflix account, watching movies is as simple as going to the App Store and, downloading the Netflix app and logging in. Browsing for movies is as easy as can be, you can scroll, through the list and add titles do your instant queue or start viewing them instantly if that option is, available. Video playback even works on 3G without any jail breaking workarounds, though it will be, considerably slower than on a WiFi network. If you do happen to use 3G to stream Netflix be sure that, you let the video buffer before expecting flawless video playback. Receiving text messages while, watching a movie is flawless, the movie is automatically paused while you respond to the text message, (works especially great if you have a third party app like ByteSMS) and then allows you to resume your, movie without interruption. If you receive a call you can choose to accept or disconnect the call,, returning to your movie. As the iPhone 5′s release will double the processor speed and increase the, graphics performance by up to 9x, you can expect to see a lot of higher quality video on the coming, iPhones, despite how impressive the current-gen iPhones are. The app isn’t perfect, however. You, cannot access your DVD queue and you cannot re-arrange your instant queue. Currently the app is just, centered on streaming “watch instantly” movies (which isn’t such a bad thing). Despite these few, letdowns, Netflix for the iPhone and iPad is great and next-gen Apple devices will be even greater in, terms of quality and speed. Knowing that at any moment I can pull out my iPhone and watch nearly any, movie I want on it keeps me paying my Netflix subscription month after month.
Hulu Plus is a neat little app if you enjoy only watching the last few episodes of a show. If you’re, looking for season-length libraries of shows you’ve come to the wrong place. Considering there are, some shows on Netflix that you can watch instant and in more quantity than on Hulu, you’re more in, luck sticking with Netflix. The video quality definitely surprised me, on par with Netflix and surprisingly, smooth when streaming through 3G. I wouldn’t recommend streaming through 3G for long periods of, time though, since AT&T started imposing strict data usage limits as of recently. The spotty selection and, high price detract from the greatness of the Hulu Plus app so the Netflix app definitely wins this time.