LoveFilm celebrated its tenth birthday this year, but it’s a very different site to the one that launched back in 2003.
These days it’s owned by Amazon and its focus is increasingly on video streaming rather than the DVDs by post that it built its business on.
However, in streaming it’s up against a very big and very big-spending rival in the form of Netflix, whose streams account for one-third of US downloads and one-fifth of European downloads at peak times.
LoveFilm often trails where Netflix leads – so for example it only just launched an iPhone app in November 2013, more than three years after Netflix did the same.
The list of LoveFilm-compatible devices isn’t as comprehensive as Netflix’s, and the devices LoveFilm does support don’t all get full HD. So does Amazon’s service have something special that the Netflix masses are missing? Let’s find out.
How much does LoveFilm cost?
LoveFilm Instant is £5.99 per month, and there’s a 30-day free trial. Like rival services, if you plan to stream video to an Xbox 360 or Xbox One you’ll also need a Gold Xbox Live account.
Where LoveFilm differs from rivals is its disc options: if you find the streaming selection wanting you can add DVD and Blu-ray rental to maximise the available viewing choices.
If you want to supplement LoveFilm Instant in this way, you’ll pay £9.99 per month for streaming plus one disc rental, £11.99 for two simultaneous rentals and £13.27 for three. Disc rentals used to include console games as well as films and TV programmes, but LoveFilm has shuttered its games rental service to concentrate on TV and film content.
That isn’t the only thing it’s got rid of. Box Office, which offered the most desirable movies on a pay per view basis, has been removed too, so you can be sure that your subscription covers all of LoveFilm’s streaming content.
What devices does LoveFilm Instant work on?
LoveFilm Instant is available for PC and Mac, Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U, iOS and Android, Sony home cinema kit and compatible Sony, Samsung and LG smart TVs and connected Blu-ray players.
LoveFilm is a service in transition from one kind of business to another, from the chucking things into envelopes business to the chucking content across the internet business, and it’s clear that this transition has some way to go.
The web version feels very dated, like browsing the Amazon of several years ago, and while the apps are prettier, they lack key features on iOS and Android.
The Android app does not currently stream anything: LoveFilm says “At this stage, the service is purely to search & browse the catalogue, and add titles to your DVD rental list. We’re rapidly rolling out our streaming services to lots of new devices so watch this space!” Hmmm.
What quality does LoveFilm Instant deliver?
LoveFilm can stream up to 1080p video to PCs, Macs and Kindle Fire HDs, but most other devices get 720p. That’s most, but not all: the iPad doesn’t get HD at all: LoveFilm says it doesn’t have the rights to stream HD content to iPads.
LoveFilm recommends a minimum connection speed of 4Mbps for 720p HD and 12Mbps for 1080p, and strongly advises a wired rather than a wireless internet connection.
What personalisation does LoveFilm Instant offer?
In addition to lists of Your TV Shows and Recently Watched, LoveFilm enables you to create watch lists of titles you’d like to see. You can also set parental controls, protected by a PIN, which apply to the website, the PS3 and PS4, Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players (other devices such as the Kindle Fire and Xbox 360 have their own parental control systems).
What can I watch on LoveFilm Instant?
As you might expect from a service called LoveFilm, the best bits of the service are the films: LoveFilm has more recent blockbusters than arch-rival Netflix, and while both services have a good selection of Disney and Pixar films, we think LoveFilm has the better selection of children’s movies.
Again and again you’ll find titles on LoveFilm that aren’t available on Netflix: at the time of writing our list included Green Lantern, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Looper, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Rio, I Give It A Year, Friends With Benefits, the 2013 Evil Dead remake…
It isn’t so good when it comes to TV, though. Hits such as Breaking Bad, Modern Family and The Killing are absent, and the series’ it does have are often quite old. For example, LoveFilm’s selection of The Office (US) episodes runs out at the end of season five (2008), but Netflix has seasons six and seven.
Like Netflix, LoveFilm is keen to sign exclusive deals – it has the exclusive rights to hack and slash epic Vikings and historical crime drama Copper – and is investing in new, exclusive content. It has five series planned for 2014: two comedies for adults, and three series for children.
Verdict
LoveFilm is well worth the money: you get a lot of movies for your cash. LoveFilm on a desktop or laptop is great, and it’s a better place for relatively recent blockbusters than its rivals.
However, it falls behind the competition in several key areas. Rivals do TV better, LoveFilm’s device support is poorer and quality varies widely between devices with most getting 720p, not 1080p. Some devices don’t get HD at all.
We also found it frustrating to search the website for films or series we wanted to watch and exclaiming “yay! Oh…” as we found them and then discovered they were only available on disc.
While being able to rent discs (at extra cost) does solve the problem of releases taking an eternity to reach streaming services, seeing the disc listings when you are not a disc subscriber is rather like hearing “here’s what you could have won!” from a gloating game show host.
Amazon has enormous resources, but it does look as if it has concentrated them on its own Kindle Fire tablets to the detriment of other, more popular platforms.
Amazon’s biggest tablet gets not just streaming but HD streaming, while iPads don’t get HD and Android doesn’t get video at all. That will no doubt change over time – Amazon’s Kindle apps are good on all platforms – but until it does it means that if you want to stream to mobile devices, LoveFilm isn’t the service for you.
Powered by WPeMatico