Neon is Terrible

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turb

844 posts

Ultimate Geek

#248861 13-Apr-2019 07:04

Up till now, I've "acquired" new episodes of Game of Thrones when they've come out.

But this time I thought I'll do the right thing and stump up for Neon.

Wow.

Flash. In 2019.
The feed that keeps dropping out or freezing (nothing to do with my end).
"Backend fetch failed" error when watching in the evening.
No subtitles.

Just. Wow.

Pirating = better user experience than Neon

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

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quickymart

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#2216256 13-Apr-2019 07:31

Looks like they were having a few issues last night (according to their Facebook page, anyway). As to the other points, maybe the new guy has those on his "to-do" list?

timmmay

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#2216319 13-Apr-2019 09:15

I read they had big problems a week or so ago too. It doesn't inspire confidence that they can handle the traffic of one of the most popular shows in the world all arriving at the same time.

turb

844 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2216324 13-Apr-2019 09:42

Yes if their CDN can't cope with us watching back episodes this week, how are they going to cope with the new episodes?

Fun fact: When I told my daughter in Wellington we'd signed up for Neon, her first words were "Oh no don't - it's crap!"

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

corksta

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#2216373 13-Apr-2019 10:34

Yeah I hope Neon is on their list of things to fix and improve. For $12 a month there’s actually a lot of pretty good TV shows on there.

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NZBuc

35 posts

Geek

#2219410 16-Apr-2019 19:50

Subscribed last night to see how good it was (not expecting much due to this thread) - was pleasantly surprised with the app on my samsung 4k tv (seemed like the GOT stream was at about 1080P.

Doubt I'll stay with it due to Netflix and dns4me, but well worth it for GOT (including series 1-7 if you want to watch too)

tdgeek

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#2219417 16-Apr-2019 20:06

corksta: Yeah I hope Neon is on their list of things to fix and improve. For $12 a month there’s actually a lot of pretty good TV shows on there.

Ive heard that here from posters in the past, a few times.

scuwp

3569 posts

Uber Geek

#2219436 16-Apr-2019 20:42

Have been signed up to Neon as a freebie for the last 2 years. I can honestly say GoT last night is the first show I have ever watched on it. Other than that last time I looked the offering was pathetic, might have to have another look. Didn't have any problems streaming through Apple TV, good quality and flawless playback.

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Lizard1977

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#2219727 17-Apr-2019 10:35

Watched GoT on Monday night, around 8pm, and was pleasantly surprised about the stability of the stream, which could have been terrible. Have to agree about Flash in 2019, though. We have our PC connected to the TV, and watch it through Chrome, and constantly get messages about Flash not being installed, or needing to be enabled.

jonathan18

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#2219740 17-Apr-2019 10:46

I assume Neon still doesn't offer discrete sound (eg 5.1)?

I don't have such an issue with Lightbox not having it, as that sub was more a bonus for being with Spark, but I'm not keen on paying for something that still has sound from the '90s.

gcorgnet

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#2219750 17-Apr-2019 10:58

Flash and no 5.1. that's pathetic

sxz

738 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2219759 17-Apr-2019 11:18

Neon is garbage. I also bought it to watch game of thrones:

1. It wont cast to my TV or my DVD player, although casting appears to be an in-app option. Every other app I have that can cast works well.

2. It never remembers where I am up to on an episode.

3. It stuttered and froze (no problem at my end) watching old GOT episodes.

4. I actually re-activated an old account. That old account was authorised to run on two deviced, neither of which I still owned. No problem, I thought, I'll just deactivate those two devices and enable my new devices. BUT WAIT! Neon only lets me change one device per month! So now my phone is activated, but I cannot activate my laptop, so I can't even plug that into the TV to watch if I wanted to - despite me paying for the service.

Neon is absolute crap. Which, as above, is a shame, because their TV shows are pretty good :|

tdgeek

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#2219762 17-Apr-2019 11:24

sxz:

Neon is garbage. I also bought it to watch game of thrones:

1. It wont cast to my TV or my DVD player, although casting appears to be an in-app option. Every other app I have that can cast works well.

2. It never remembers where I am up to on an episode.

3. It stuttered and froze (no problem at my end) watching old GOT episodes.

4. I actually re-activated an old account. That old account was authorised to run on two deviced, neither of which I still owned. No problem, I thought, I'll just deactivate those two devices and enable my new devices. BUT WAIT! Neon only lets me change one device per month! So now my phone is activated, but I cannot activate my laptop, so I can't even plug that into the TV to watch if I wanted to - despite me paying for the service.

Neon is absolute crap. Which, as above, is a shame, because their TV shows are pretty good :|

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

rb99

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#2219767 17-Apr-2019 11:27

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...

rb99

gehenna

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#2219772 17-Apr-2019 11:32

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.

sxz

738 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2219773 17-Apr-2019 11:32

tdgeek:

sxz:

Neon is garbage. I also bought it to watch game of thrones:

1. It wont cast to my TV or my DVD player, although casting appears to be an in-app option. Every other app I have that can cast works well.

2. It never remembers where I am up to on an episode.

3. It stuttered and froze (no problem at my end) watching old GOT episodes.

4. I actually re-activated an old account. That old account was authorised to run on two deviced, neither of which I still owned. No problem, I thought, I'll just deactivate those two devices and enable my new devices. BUT WAIT! Neon only lets me change one device per month! So now my phone is activated, but I cannot activate my laptop, so I can't even plug that into the TV to watch if I wanted to - despite me paying for the service.

Neon is absolute crap. Which, as above, is a shame, because their TV shows are pretty good :|

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

It tries to remember where on an episode I am up to, but it is almost always wrong, and I find myself having to fast forward to where I think I should be up to. THe experience is nowhere near as good as Netflix, which is flawless in that regard.

The actual streaming is usually pretty good, it shows 1080p on my phone and does look very nice, and the freezing was only on occasion (on old episodes) but I'd hate to have a viewing with lots of friends only to have an episode skip and stutter at just the wrong time!!

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