5 Netflix tips to streamline your streaming

By Joshua Smith Published August 26, 2015

Kicking back and unwinding with a movie or TV show on Netflix is as simple as finding what you want and hitting play, right? Well, sure. But there’s a lot of stuff hidden inside Netflix that most people have no idea exists. We’re talking about ways to bump up the streaming video quality, see who’s watching what on your account, customize the on screen look, and more. Whether you’re binge-watching the latest season of “Orange is the New Black” or pressing play on a classic like “Forrest Gump,” these power tips can make your Netflix experience that much better.

In this video, find out our top five Netflix secrets, all easy enough for anyone to master.

Joshua Smith

Former Video Contributor

Just another not so ordinary kid living this thing we like to call life.

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Entertainment

An AI-generated movie flopped in China despite its budget and Hollywood must take notes

China’s AI-made movie bombed at the box office while a human-made low-budget, animated film struck gold.

China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.

According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.

Computing

Grok’s AI-generated Odyssey series is seven minutes of nothing happening beautifully

The landscapes look convincing. The fake Hugh Jackman and Instagram-face amalgamation playing Penelope are harder to forgive.

Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.

https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911

Entertainment

YouTube’s next big upgrade could make videos use 30% less data

AV2 could reduce the data needed to stream videos while enabling better HDR and multi-view experiences.

YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.

What is AV2, and why should viewers care?