Netflix arrives in Italy

While Netflix has been providing video streaming since 2008, the service has finally arrived in Italy with lots of fanfare.

rinaz.net Netflix arrives in Italy

Netflix is basically a video streaming service where you could watch unlimited videos legally, on various platforms. While there are already other video streaming services in Italy, Netflix’s pricing is competitive, has a wide variety of shows and has subscriptions for multiple users in a single household at the same time.

So far, Cart and I are quite enamoured with it and we have been spending quite a fair bit of time (and social life)  exploring the various shows that it provided. We mainly watch them from our phones and our laptops.

rinaz.net Netflix arrives in Italy

What’s great about Netflix is that even when we are out of Italy, we could still watch the shows in other countries as long as we had an internet connection. My theory is that the shows we watch will be different depending on our location, but I’m not completely sure of that. We’ll find out more when we reach Singapore in mid December.

I used to plug my laptop to the TV via HDMI which can be a hassle. Recently though, I got for us a Chromecast set which we plug to the television.

This device sort of makes our smartphone be an interactive TV Control and allows us to broadcast certain apps from our phones straight to the television. It’s so convenient. Even if you don’t use Netflix, if you haven’t one yet, I think you should get one.  And at 38 euro, it isn’t that expensive.

rinaz.net Using Chromecast with Netflix

We used to have a HDMI dongle that converts our TV into a sort of a tablet. But I find Chromecast superior as it loads much faster and doesn’t bog down the internet connection too much. Plus, it’s much cheaper compared to the dongle which costs about 65 euro.

rinaz.net Using Chromecast with Netflix

Anyway some of the shows which I’ve watched and enjoyed :

Daredevil

A lot more interesting compared to the movie with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Gardner.

Orange is the new black

I didn’t get sucked into the hype but when I started watching it, I just couldn’t stop. I don’t think that I’d be able to watch season two though because of the finale. I don’t see how it can continue to be “Comedy”

Cowspiracy

This documentary was insightful on how intensive animal farming plays a huge part in pollution.

The True Cost

This is a show about fast fashion – and watching this, makes me feel compelled to get more clothes from independent seamstresses or second hand shops.

rinaz.net Netflix arrives in Italy

One of the features I like is that the app keeps track of the shows that you’ve watched.

There are a lot more shows to explore – Narcos which has been recommended a lot, Under the Dome which should be interesting since it was written by Stephen King and Cart has been obsessed with Battlestar Galactica. He finds the series smart and very well written.  I can’t bear to watch it though, after seeing the first episode, I find the entire storyline is so depressing. I prefer watching comedies and light hearted shows.

Suffice to say, I’m loving the Netflix experience so far. I’m not sure how it works though, after a month does the videos rotate? Does new videos come in next month and older videos are taken down from streaming?

rinaz.net Netflix arrives in Italy

Also, you can change the audio and subtitles to and from English to Italian as well as other languages where available. 

It didn’t seem that long ago when I went down to the DVD shop near my parent’s house and browsed through the jewel cases. It was like 10 dollars to rent 5 DVDs for a week. And then walk to the supermarket to get some junk food. Each weekend, we’d get together and watch a video. Things are so high-tech now.

P.s. If you’re using Telegram, there’s a bot which updates you on the videos that are available on Netflix according to your region. Just search for  ‘netflixnewsbot’.