After being kindly offered some voucher codes to watch series 2 of Game of Thrones on Blinkbox, I decided to investigate what this actually was. Although we couldn't get the vouchers to work with GoT I signed up and got an offer for £5 free credit and started watching.
I had heard of Blinkbox, but never bothered looking into it. We aren't technophobes in our house, far from it, but I suppose since we have found a couple of streaming services we haven't looked at anything else.
We don't watch terrestrial tv. At all. In fact we can't as our free sat stopped working last week when we had new windows installed and we haven't bothered getting it sorted.
We have a PS3 and through this have discovered that it is easy to watch iplayer, the terrible 4OD and the joy of Netflix. We choose what we want to watch and then just end up watching endless episodes of Dora the Explorer for the 3 year old.
Blinkbox differs from Netflix in a number of ways. There is no subscription, which is good if you really want to pick and choose what you watch from there or it's going to just supplement either Sky or Netflix (which are subscription based). The interface with PS3 is clunky though as you have to go through the web browser as opposed to an application system like iplayer. You also can't sign up through the PS3 but have to create an account via a computer, but this is a one-off issue.
The viewing choices are great though, different newer tv series and more up to date movies than Netflix. The prices are comparable to the streaming Playstation system as well. I've got my eye on the Being Human back catalog, Homeland and a few other things that managed to slip us by. Episodes seem to cost about £1.89 each, movies around £3-3.50 each. Fine, and comparable to other services.
Blinkbox doesn't have a HD streaming option and this is where my husband and I differ in our opinions about the service. I'm not that bothered with DVD quality tv. He is and would rather buy the Blueray discs apparently and pay for that extra visual quality. I agree that Netflix is probably better in this regard as they have a number of shows that use Super-HD but if I want to watch something in particular it won't put me off.
Will I use Blinkbox in the future? Definitely. The range of viewing is excellent and I will hope that the service gets easier to use on PS3. Hopefully with Tesco behind it the system will smarten up.
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