sigmbire gavrie lindberg
Karlyn Hemmerling
Netflix app on my iPad crashes when I attempt to search. I have an ipad1. I have removed and reinstalled the Netflix app with no luck. I have hard reset the device. No luck. I have closed all apps and launched the Netflix app, still no luck. I am running the latest iOS.
I've called Netflix several times in the past few months on tis issue. They always say they have never heard the issue before... In the ipad diagnostics, I often see a low memory crash error. I believe the issue would be resolved if they went back to the old search, which was to type into the search box, then click a button to search on the Netflix server and display a results page. I think the instant search must use too much memory for an pad 1. the instant search is ot as good either, because it only searches for titles.
I agree that the issue is with Netflix and memory. My diagnostics show low-memory conditions when it crashes sometimes. I've called Netflix a few times, but they say they have never heard of this issue before. In fact, I believe they need to code it better. I'm guessing that the issue may occur for users who have a lot of movies in their queue. They are loading up EVERYTHING into memory without checking how much they are loading. Then, when you click on the "Search" box, it tries to preload something that has no more room in memory to load. Clicking on the "Search" box should not do anything. Even typing should not do anything. We should be able to turn off instant search and just click a search button after we have typed in search words. This would be a better search method, because it would allow us to search for actors and directors, and keywords, not just movie titles.
When this happens I can double tap the home button and I can see the list of Apps that are running. I then just kill/close the netfilx app. I wait a second or two and launch the netflix app and the ability to seach is restored.
Same issue here. Both iPad and iPhone jailbroken but problem arises only on the former. Quitting app or freeing memory doesn't help. So far I've not found a solution. Have tried various options, including all the "fixes" listed here - no luck.
I have the same issue with the search. It all used to work just fine. Also it crashes when I look up info on a show then I try to change seasons. I'm on an original iPad that's NOT jail broken. Netflix claims they've never heard of this problem and just blame the iPad. No help at all! Hope somehow this gets resolved soon.
OK, we ditched netflix when they went up on the price. Maybe we should look into again for the streaming only, which is mostly what we used it for. I am just exasperated with the LACK of choices on cable. We have ditched that in the past (we have the very basic we can get), but when we do we end up paying more for just phone and internet alone than getting the bundle which includes basic cable (I did call and have some stations completely blocked which helped a lot).
tristan, thanks for the tip on prefs. I just spent a little while rating some stuff as it is quiet hour here. I also added about 50 shows/movies to our queue. And I downloaded the mobile app. to put on my iPhone. That could come in very handy.
Yes, you can use it anywhere with wifi BUT each account only allows so many 6 devices to be approved at once and only 2 streaming simultaneously. All you have to do is go in your account to handle that stuff.
When my husband and I spent 10 days in the NICU with Mason in January we were able to watch Netflix on the laptop we had brought and the kids could watch Netflix back at home on the tv with grandma if they wanted to.
pinkchopsticks, I hear ya on the library fines. Oops! Ours charges $1 per DAY that DVDs are late. That adds up fast! I always got confused b/c DVDs are only 7-day rental while books and audiobooks are 21 days. So yeah, no DVDs from library for us though we get a lot of audiobooks there.
To start, I found an (admittedly old) post from someone at Netflix stating that their licensing requirements prohibited them from providing ways to control the player externally (everything needed to be wrapped up in a netflix-branded application, and providing ways to interact with the player externally would allow you to embed the netflix player in places it shouldn't go.) You can find that reply here (although it's four years old, I'd imagine not much has changed.)
I tried snooping around on the 'watch instantly' page myself, and there are objects like netflix.SilverLight and netflix.SilverLight.MoviePlayer (which has a getPlugin() method that returns some details about the plugin, and hookable events, but no methods for control,) but they mostly have to do with exposing the size of the player viewport, among other things necessary to place it on the page. I couldn't really find anything in any of the objects that suggested they interacted with the movie player that would seem to allow me access to it.
I also snagged the player binaries, and snooping through them I've found a ScriptInterface object internally with [ScriptableMember]-decorated methods in it called PlayMovie(), StopMovie(), ShowCurtain(), HideCurtain().
Then, I noticed there's another namespace in the player binaries called Netflix.Silverlight.CBPApp.HostedPlayer, which has its own interface - HostedPlayerScriptInterface. This has everything you want in it - data on play position, controls for increasing and decreasing play speed, pausing, playing, setting the play position, querying play state, etc. All of these are decorated as [ScriptableMember]s.
Now I break your heart - it looks like (for whatever reason) this interface is not exposed as a [ScriptableType], which to my understanding is a requirement for being able to access it from javascript. In fact, the only things that seem to be exposed this way are events that the player fires. My guess is that this code is for integrating with other partners, or left over from someone they inherited the original code for the video player from, but it seems intentionally that this [ScriptableType] parameter is left out. There may be a way to request a binary that's built to be 'Hosted', though I'm not sure what that means, and I also suspect it will be transparently obvious to the people watching what you're trying to do and have a stop put to it quickly.
Sorry for the long-winded response that ends in disappointment, but it appears as of right now there's not really a way to do this. I've seen some suggestions that basically amount to sending keystrokes to the browser window that emulate the keyboard controls, but this clearly isn't what you're looking for, so I'm going to go with 'no' as an answer here. :)
So, looks like you need to trick the Netflix player into thinking it's running in hosted player mode. There's some configuration options that can be passed in, but I'm not sure how, specifically, you would do that. It looks like that's all set up on player initialization - maybe some sort of bookmarklet could reload the page and inject a change? Or maybe just reload the player and change the settings.
Bear in mind I haven't done much of this javascript interop stuff so much of this is inferred from the documentation, but it does seem as if there is a javascript control API in there, it's just a matter of tricking the player into working in Hosted mode.
Going to have to stop here, but hopefully this gives you a good start. I've dumped the contents of that hosted player Javascript API file so you can see the methods that will be exposed once you manage to get the player in Hosted mode.
In Silverlight for a method to be exposed to JavaScript directly, it needs attributes [ScriptableType] on its class and [ScriptableMember] on itself. You could try opening up the XAP file for the Netflix player, disassembling the main assembly, and searching for any methods with [ScriptableMember] attached to them. This may not turn up anything useful at all, but it is something you can try nonetheless.
At last, my collection is complete. Just the other day I received my invite to the beta of Redbox Instant. I was excited. The idea sounds great: it's like Netflix, but you also get four monthly credits at Redbox rental kiosks! Awesome, right? What's that? Verizon has something to do with it? Well, no matter. It's not exclusive to the carrier's handsets, so I'm sure it's nothing to worry about! I'm ready to get my hands all up on this thing.
Note: This is currently an unreleased preview product, and comes with all the requisite disclaimers. I will leave this blanket 'things could get better by the time it's released' caveat here, because repeating it every time I mention something bad would be too cumbersome.
I promise, I will have at least some nice things to say about Redbox Instant during this hands-on, but you will probably not know it if you only read this section because the process to get into the beta is god awful. Not just bad, but broken. If you score an invite and use Chrome, may I recommend you change to Firefox, because I had multiple occasions where entering required info returned errors that were not reported, and the page simply stared at me.
Assuming you don't encounter the bugginess of the sign-up process, however, the design of the invite accounts is unbelievably weird. You must provide your access code each time you log in, and on every device. You cannot use an invite code to give your account access and expect the server to simply remember. I have signed up for hundreds of accounts for things over the years and have never encountered this idea. Whatever. Keep that initial email handy.
Of course, the invite code problem will be moot by the time the service goes public, but the rest of the issues are very worrying. There are only a couple of months left until Redbox Instant is slated to go live and billing seems like an essential service. While it's possible that this will be ironed out in that very short amount of time, there are a lot of things that need fixing and this doesn't give me warm, happy feelings about the potential here.
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