One of the neat features in the new televisions coming out from Panasonic in 2012 is the ability to natively stream content from Quickflix in addition to existing services found on the Viera Connect platform (such as ABC iView and Yahoo!7). Given that I have my eyes on the Panasonic VT50A 55″ plasma television, I thought I might give the Quickflix streaming service a spin for a month to see how it performs.
So far, I’ve only tested streaming on my desktop computer connected to our existing Panasonic VT20A 50″ plasma television with two movies (“Groundhog Day” and “Best In Show”) but there have been no issues with streaming or interruptions to normal viewing so far. The only buffering that has taken place has been the brief period when starting up a new movie and even then it’s fairly quick to get going. In terms of download consumption, videos appear to use around 200KB/s which means a two hours movie would use about 1.4GB of data (so you might want to keep this in mind if you are on an internet plan with a low usage quota).
Anyway, we’re going to assess Quickflix for the first month and see how it fares. For $15 a month (plus a $13 admin fee when you start your subscription) it shouldn’t break the bank. My only concern at this point is that the content available for streaming is not in line with what is available for DVD and Blu-ray mail out (which will cost you more if you want to get that content on disc via mail). Quickflix should move quickly to remedy this before other major players from overseas get in first.
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