Neon is Terrible

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#2219775 17-Apr-2019 11:33

rb99:

Call me old fashioned but I find its less trouble to be out of date / behind the times and wait till there's a bluray version available at a decent price. Only takes, what, 6 months...

Old fashioned. :)

rb99

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#2219779 17-Apr-2019 11:36

sxz:

rb99:

Call me old fashioned but I find its less trouble to be out of date / behind the times and wait till there's a bluray version available at a decent price. Only takes, what, 6 months...

Old fashioned. :)

Call me AWESOME.

Any takers ?

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rb99

bigmacpaddy

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#2219780 17-Apr-2019 11:37

tdgeek:

So no casting, no remembering the ep and it stutters and freezes for all users? (on OLD GOT eps)

If it does all those things to all users, its terrible yes, but I do wonder if that's really the case

I signed up for game of thrones, tried to watch the old episodes and the sound stuttered badly and made it unwatchable.

Also, it seems to work ok if i cast to my Shield the first time for the day. If i pause/stop/change episode the casting just dies and won't reconnect without a lot of turning off, restarting etc. A real pain.

rb99

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#2219782 17-Apr-2019 11:38

gehenna:

rb99:

Call me old fashioned but I find its less trouble to be out of date / behind the times and wait till there's a bluray version available at a decent price. Only takes, what, 6 months...

That's not really a viable option with a show like Game of Thrones unless you can go without internet access for 6 months to avoid spoilers. Almost everything in my twitter and other feeds the other day was post-episode reactions/spoilers.

True, but I can't claim to be a devoted follower, so I'll survive waiting and the odd spoiler or three.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

sidefx

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#2219783 17-Apr-2019 11:46

turb:

Pirating = better user experience than Neon

TBF, while it's pretty close, perhaps even level with some services (e.g. Netflix) pirating is still a better experience than most streaming services at least IMO. But yeah... NEON is the worst of them. I subscribed for a couple of years a few years ago and was astounded that they were still using flash and didn't have 5.1 support (I think at the time they also only supported 720P... at least that has changed in the interim?)

But it literally blows my mind that these really basic things are STILL an issue. Not to mention the fairly small (at least IMO) range of support for client devices.

They really need to invest more in IT, less on marketing, then the service would probably sell itself a bit more...

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Lyderies

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#2219788 17-Apr-2019 11:55

My friend is Chinese and cannot speak English very well, signed up ages ago so we could watch it with English subtitles or maybe Cantonese subs, neither were available.

Back to pirating then searching for subs, adding subs into video program and woosh, Cantonese subs so she can follow exactly whats going on.

Neon sucks, I tried contacting them to cancel and delete my information, took 3 months.

I'm going to noob myself past judgement

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dafman

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#2219805 17-Apr-2019 12:21

I got Neon as a freebie for something about a year ago, forget what. The first thing I tried to watch on it, the lip sync was out by a fair margin. I didn't bother trying a second.

kharris

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#2219998 17-Apr-2019 15:53

I agree with many that the app is pretty crap. The Airplay is pretty unreliable too.... what ever happened to the apple TV app that was constantly promised.

Kirk

quickymart

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#2220241 17-Apr-2019 21:49

Last I heard about Neon is it's a whole bunch of old, oft-repeated TV shows and movies, all in SD, for $20 a month...unless things have changed, I wouldn't be parting with my money for it.

corksta

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#2220248 17-Apr-2019 22:14

quickymart:
Last I heard about Neon is it's a whole bunch of old, oft-repeated TV shows and movies, all in SD, for $20 a month...unless things have changed, I wouldn't be parting with my money for it.

$20 is for movies and TV, $11.99 for TV.

A lot of HBO’s catalog is on there so there is some pretty good stuff.

JimmyD

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#2221066 19-Apr-2019 11:34

corksta:
quickymart:
Last I heard about Neon is it's a whole bunch of old, oft-repeated TV shows and movies, all in SD, for $20 a month...unless things have changed, I wouldn't be parting with my money for it.

$20 is for movies and TV, $11.99 for TV.

A lot of HBO’s catalog is on there so there is some pretty good stuff.

In addition to HBO, there’s a range of up-to-date shows and boxed sets from Showtime, FX, AMC, Starz and Cinemax. These are all premium pay TV networks. Americans would consider Neon to be a wet dream to have many of these shows on one service starting from just $11.99 per month. In contrast, HBO and Showtime’s streaming services are $14.99 USD and $10.99 USD respectively.

Content-wise, I personally think Neon may have Netflix, Lightbox and Amazon Video beat. Yet, I subscribe to Netflix, Lightbox and Amazon Video but not Neon. Why?

For one we still do not have an Apple TV app. Neon has been around for over 4 years and we are coming up to 4 years since the release of the fourth generation Apple TV. I refuse to pay for Neon until this happens. Sky, you’ve had nearly four years to get this sorted. What’s your excuse? Lightbox, ThreeNow and TVNZ have had Apple TV apps for years.

I Airplayed last season’s Game of Thrones when they had the 2 month free trial and it wasn’t a good experience. I couldn’t even turn off the display without it shutting off...

Secondly, Neon’s streaming quality is substandard. Even when we do get “720p”, it’s full of heavy macro-blocking and poor contrast with washed out blacks. Then there’s the audio... I’m not expecting Sky to be on par with a tech powerhouse like Netflix but I do expect a premium service to be at least on par with TVNZ and ThreeNow. .

I thought I would just quickly familiarise myself with your content. Wow! It’s better than I remembered... Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Barry, Ray Donovan, Escape at Dannemora, Counterpart, True Detective, Billions, The Newsroom, Succession, Westworld, Mayans MC, Sharp Objects, What We Do In The Shadows, Veep, Warrior, Legion. Then there’s boxed sets of The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Californication, Dexter, Banshee, as well as the previous seasons of the aforementioned shows. Damn!

Yet, I still won’t be subscribing. I stopped pirating because streaming was more convenient. Neon isn’t convenient to me because you don’t have an Apple TV app after nearly four years. Sky, you have the best content, at a decent price but your service let’s you down.

Sorry everybody for the rant. I was only going to reply with my first paragraph and then this happened.

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turb

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#2221097 19-Apr-2019 12:31

Update:
Since the hiccups watching the previous series episodes, it's been fine watching the new series.

Has anyone else had any problems watching the new episodes at peak times?

Just for completeness, here is my underwhelming experience on their FB messenger channel:

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

sm1ff

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#2221213 19-Apr-2019 17:24

Neon has told me it has a maximum bitrate of 1800 kbps and in HD.
I have so far refused to sign up to it and cannot comment on its service quality as I have seen many many comments everywhere on the internet that it's very poor.
I also download content that neon has the rights to only because I can get usually at least 10mb/s bitrate at full 1080p and it includes 5.1 surround sound. This is often with the label AMZN.

Wash

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#2223118 24-Apr-2019 11:02

sm1ff: Neon has told me it has a maximum bitrate of 1800 kbps and in HD.
I have so far refused to sign up to it and cannot comment on its service quality as I have seen many many comments everywhere on the internet that it's very poor.
I also download content that neon has the rights to only because I can get usually at least 10mb/s bitrate at full 1080p and it includes 5.1 surround sound. This is often with the label AMZN.

NEON's max bitrate is actually ~5800kbps for 1080p quality, especially for titles like GoT.

howdystranger

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#2223143 24-Apr-2019 12:10

I have subscribed to watch GoT - works well casting to my old TV with a chromecast. I find the lack of subtitles annoying.

I think they don't make enough money out if it to invest in it, so it's crap. But then people won't subscribe so it never makes any money. A vicious cycle...

Hopefully the new CEO decides to invest a bit more in it.

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