How-To

Binge Watch Netflix like a Pro this Weekend

The weekend is here and it’s time to binge-watch shows on Netflix. Here are some tips and tricks to utilize to get the most out of your Netflix experience.

The weekend is here and it’s time to block out work, your annoying boss, school work, and whatever craziness is going on in your life. You soak yourself into the sofa and binge watch your favorite shows on Netflix. Here’s a list of tips and tricks that you might want to utilize to get the most out of your Netflix experience.

Smoother Streaming with Hidden Settings

While watching Netflix on your laptop you can hit Shift+Alt (Shift+Option on a Mac) and left-click on the screen with your mouse to open the diagnostic window. This contains several settings you can tweak, including the Stream Manager which allows you to manually select the best-buffering rate for your connection. This also allows you to sync up audio/video sync issue. You can find out more details in this article.

Netflix Buffering Settings

Use Apple TV Remote Navigation Tricks

When you’re watching a show, hit the up arrow twice on the Apple TV remote to display a thumbnail as well as the title and description of what you’re watching.

You can also hit the down arrow to display a progress bar with time marks. It breaks the show into 20 sections of equal length. This allows you to skip two minutes or seconds by hitting the left or right arrows. If you’re watching a two-hour movie, it’s a six-minute skip. This provides an easy way to get to your favorite parts of the flick.

Apple TV Remote Tricks

Make Sure You’re Getting HD Quality

There’s no reason not to be watching your shows and movies in HD. To ensure your content is coming through in the highest quality, on a computer log into your account, select Playback Settings, under Data Usage click High and make sure to hit Save.

Netflix HD

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re a keyboard kung-fu master, you’ll definitely want to dig into the various keyboard shortcuts you can use to improve your experience while watching shows on your laptop. Here are just a few examples, you can get a ton more at this Reddit post.

The Netflix movie player (Silverlight desktop version)

  • Space – Toggle Play/Pause
  • F – Full-screen
  • Shift+Left arrow – Rewind
  • Shift+Right arrow – Fast Forward
  • M – Mute toggle

In full-screen mode

  • Ctrl+space – Frame forward/backward mode
  • Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M – Menu; includes loading custom .dfxp sub-title files
  • Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D – Display A/V Stats on-screen
  • Ctrl+Shift+Alt+L – Logging window

Create Netflix Profiles

Last year Netflix introduces user profiles for other users in your house. This is great so everyone in your house is able to maintain a list of shows they like to watch. So, that means when you log into your profile, you get your favorite shows and not a smorgasbord of everyone’s shows. Setting up and maintaining profiles is easy. For more, check out our article on how to create Netflix profiles. By the way, the feature has been added to Android devices as well as Chromecast.

Don’t Fall Asleep and Miss Episodes

Watching new original Netflix programs or your favorite show seasons can get you sucked in fast. Especially since Netflix recently added a feature called “Post-Play”  that queues up the next episode without you having to do anything. But the cool thing it does is make sure you’re still awake and watching, by periodically asking if you want to continue watching.

It’s also worth noting that if you’re not a fan of the Post-Play feature, you can disable it in Playback Settings by unchecking “Play next episode automatically.”

Netflix Post Play

Get Recommendations from Facebook Friends

Netflix announced last year that it was getting more social by allowing users to connect their Facebook accounts. This allows you to get recommendations from your friends on what to watch on Netflix. If you haven’t set this up, you can see how it works in the video below.

Some people might find this useful, on the other hand, if you are watching episodes of Glee, you might not want to share that with everyone. If that’s the case, just make sure the feature is disabled in your account settings.

Hopefully, you’ll find these tips helpful. As you’ll need to actually log into your Netflix account on your computer for some of them, just make sure to have a laptop lying next to the popcorn and beer!

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. shockersh

    October 25, 2014 at 8:54 am

    Don’t even want to know how you found the streaming settings on this one gP.

    Great tip. Going through a binge as we speak of Season two of Longmire. That show gets better with each episode.

    Ok…. I’ve said too much ;) gotta bounce!

  2. Lynn

    March 6, 2018 at 9:28 pm

    Oh yes there is…I’m paying $70+ per month for 30 GB. Netflix movies eat up so much of my data. Turning on HD is crazy…at 3-4 GB per movie (or episode) there is no binge watching here!

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