Internet Things

Netflix – 8 tips to get the most from your subscription

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A screenshot of the Netflix home page when logged in

We’re a few months into our Netflix subscription and on the whole we haven’t been getting as much value out of it as I expected us to, which is a shame. I had considered cancelling it, as it’s not worth paying for something that I don’t use. And whilst I’m still open to that idea if we’re still not using it much in a few months’ time, I decided to rethink how we’re using Netflix rather than going for the nuclear option straight-away.

So, here are my tips for making the most of your Netflix subscription.

1. Add lots of titles to your list

Netflix has a ‘queue’ of sorts, called My List, where you can add films and shows that you want to watch. These could be films that you haven’t seen before, or TV shows that you want to watch again, or children’s’ shows that your kids want to watch over and over again. Keeping lots of titles here will mean that you avoid the situation where you open Netflix to watch something but then can’t immediately think what you want to watch.

2. Add TV shows to your list

Netflix, despite its name, isn’t just about ‘flicks’, i.e. movies/films. There are plenty of TV shows on there, and in some cases you can watch every season. So add a few TV shows to your list as well as films – that way, if you don’t have enough spare time for a whole film, then you can watch a quick half hour TV show.

3. Install Netflix’s mobile apps to add to your list on the go…

Let’s say you’re out with your friends, and someone recommends a film or TV show to you. If you have the Netflix app on your phone, you can simply add it to your list there and then. No need to write it down or try to remember it and then forget it. And then you can watch it when you have the time to do so.

4. …or to watch things on the go

Admittedly, watching films and TV shows on a smartphone screen doesn’t make for a good experience. But if you have a generous data allowance on your mobile contract and nothing better to do, then why not pass the time with a quick TV show? Even better if you have a tablet with a larger screen. And it’s great for sick days when you can’t face getting out of bed to watch TV.

5. Watch films in bits

Netflix remembers your position when watching content, even if you break off and have to do something else. So if you don’t have time to watch a full feature-length film, just watch a bit of it. Then, pick it up again when you have some more time. The position will synchronise between the web site and apps, so you could start watching a film on your Roku or Apple TV, then watch a bit on your iPhone before finishing it off on the web site.

6. Build up your taste profile for better recommendations

One of Netflix’s big selling points is its ability to recommend films and TV shows to you that you may not have come across. As you watch content on Netflix, it learns what you like and, over time, its recommendations should improve. However, when you first get started Netflix may struggle to suggest anything sensible, so spend some time on the ‘taste profile’ tab on the web site to refine its suggestions. Or just browse around and rate any films and TV shows that you have already seen.

As Netflix’s recommendations improve, you’ll hopefully find some interesting new content to add to your list.

7. Find out when new releases are available using Netflix Notifier

Netflix Notifier is a third-party site which lets you create a watchlist of films that you want to see, but that aren’t on Netflix yet – and then emails you when they become available. I reviewed it in July when I added four films – of those, so far only Hunger Games: Catching Fire has become available to watch in the UK.

Note: since this blog was written, Netflix Notifier has closed down.

8. Use a VPN to access another country’s library

Because of the weird and wonderful world of international copyright licensing agreements, the selection of films and TV shows differs between each country that Netflix operates in. A way around this is using a VPN – a Virtual Private Network – to fool Netflix into thinking you’re based somewhere else. So a British user could use a VPN located in the US to watch shows that would be otherwise unavailable. Be aware that you’ll probably have to pay extra for a decent VPN connection. And bear in mind that film studios are pressuring Netflix to block access from VPNs – whilst it would be impossible to block every VPN, some of the more popular ones may get locked out.

How to work out whether Netflix is worth it for you

Netflix is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet, when compared to ‘a la carte’ services like Google Play and Blinkbox where you pay for each individual episode or season. To take the example of Channel 4 show Misfits, Blinkbox charges £1.89 per episode or £8.99 per series; if you watch four episodes in a month, then Netflix is cheaper as it costs £5.99 per month. Films on Blinkbox are typically around £2.50, or more for new releases.

So if you’re watching, say, two films, or four TV shows, or a film and two TV shows each month, then you’re probably getting your money’s worth. If not, and you’ve tried all of my suggestions above, then you may wish to reconsider whether a subscription service like Netflix is best for you. You may get better value from other sites where you pay for each show individually.

Goodbye Delicious, hello Pinboard

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Yesterday’s links from Delicious post will be the last one, as from now on I’ll be using rival bookmarking service Pinboard.

I’ve been using Delicious for some time and for a time I was one of its featured users – I managed to amass several thousand followers on there, which is far more than on all of my other social media presences combined. But clearly people are not using Delicious anymore – nowadays, when I save a link, I’m invariably the first person to do so. And usually the only person. It used to be that any link would have had several other people saving it to their bookmarks as well, but not now. And these links are from the likes of BBC News and Lifehacker – not exactly small and niche sites.

Furthermore Delicious changed hands again recently. You may remember Yahoo! bought it years ago, and then more recently it was sold to AVOS Systems, a company owned by the original founders of YouTube. And then in May Delicious was bought again by Science Inc, which co-incidentally was the last thing posted to Delicious’ blog and Twitter account. Either its new owners have something big planned or it’s being neglected like it was in the Yahoo! days.

Meanwhile years ago I signed up for a Pinboard account. Pinboard doesn’t have free accounts; instead, everyone pays a one-time sign-up fee which increases over time. It was $9.40 then, now it’s $10.46. You can also upgrade to enable archiving, where a copy of every page you bookmark is saved, allowing you to search them. This is $25 per year, but your first year is discounted by your sign-up fee, so it would cost me $15.60 in year one.

Pinboard can do a lot more things than Delicious, and has plenty of options to set for your account. This is at the expense of design, however, and explains the main reason why I hadn’t switched sooner. As much as I prefer to pay for services I use regularly, Delicious – especially after its redesign – was a nicer experience. But I’m concerned about Delicious’ long-term future, and so I’ll go with Pinboard.

Switching over to Pinboard from Delicious was simple, as the apps I use the most for saving links – Reeder and Pocket – support both services, as does IFTTT which I use for sharing links to Twitter.

If you read this blog or follow me on Twitter, then the chances are that you won’t notice anything different. My Pinboard profile is public, so if you also use it, you can follow me on there.

Roku 2 XS Streaming Player review

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A photo of the box for the Roku 2 XS Streaming Player

Last week I purchased a Roku 2 XS Streaming Player from Amazon. Normally costing around £80, Amazon are now selling them for £55, making them just £6 more expensive than the slightly newer but more limited Roku Streaming Stick (sponsored link).

When I discussed streaming media boxes last month, the streaming stick was my original first choice, but this was before the drop in price of the Roku 2 XS. Compared with the Streaming Stick, the 2 XS adds a number of extra features:

  • A USB port, for plugging in external hard disks to watch video files from.
  • A Micro-SD card slot to expand its storage space from the 256 megabytes provided as standard.
  • An Ethernet port.
  • Analogue outputs for televisions that don’t support HDMI.
  • A motion-sensitive remote for playing games, with Angry Birds included.

The latter two don’t bother me too much, but extra capacity could be useful if I end up installing lots of extra channels.

I’m really impressed with it, actually. The box is tiny and can sit comfortably in the palm of your hand – in fact, the remote control is longer than the box itself. Speaking of which, the remote is simple and doesn’t have lots of seemingly useless buttons like most of our other remotes. It doesn’t come with HDMI cable as standard, instead shipping with an analogue cable, but you can get a reasonable HDMI cable from most pound shops these days.

Setting up the Roku

Device setup is quite easy – plug it into your TV and the mains, and then the device will try to connect to the internet. If you haven’t plugged an Ethernet cable in, you’ll get to select a Wifi network, and enter the passcode. Your device will now ask you to go to a computer and set up a Roku account, and then enter a code to link your device to your account. You do need to enter either a credit card number or PayPal email address to create an account, but you won’t be charged unless you purchase an app which costs money.

Roku will offer several channels to you, and then you’re ready to go. It’s easy to navigate around, although sometimes there’s a bit of a lag between you pressing a button on the remote and the box reacting. The newer and more powerful Roku 3 should have less lag but it’s quite a bit more expensive.

Setting up your Roku with your YouTube, Facebook and Flixster (for UltraViolet) accounts is done on your computer as before, but the Netflix app requires you to enter your username and password on the device itself. You can use an on-screen keyboard, or a mobile app for iOS or Android which turns your phone into a remote control, with keyboard entry. I found that the Netflix app would not accept a password with special characters so I had to change it first.

Using the Roku

Once set up, the device is really simple to use on a day to day basis. Firstly, you don’t need to turn it off, as it effectively runs on the same power as a Raspberry Pi and can be left plugged in and switched on without drawing too much electricity. This means it doesn’t take ages to boot up when you want to watch something. Apart from the slight interface lag as mentioned before, it’s quick to navigate through, and as most of the apps are official and authorised you get a consistent experience – the iPlayer app works in a similar way to the BBC’s web site, for example.

I’ve mentioned BBC iPlayer, but ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 are also available, covering all four main free-to-air broadcasters in the UK. Of the paid-for streaming services, Roku supports Netflix and Sky’s Now TV, but not Tesco’s BlinkBox or Rakuten’s Wuaki TV. US users can get the Amazon Prime Instant Video channel but it hasn’t launched in the UK yet.

If you want to watch content on your own computer, such as films that you have copied from DVDs, then you can install the Plex app on your Roku, and the Plex Media Server app on your computer. The Plex app on the Roku is free for 30 days and then there is a small charge to keep using it – I paid £1.49 but I think this was a special offer.

Another nifty feature allows you to beam content from the YouTube mobile app to your Roku, in a similar way to Google’s ChromeCast stick and Apple’s AirPlay. An icon appears on your screen, which will show the video on your TV, but you retain control on the mobile device. Right now, YouTube and Netflix are the only two apps which support this although I haven’t tried Netflix myself.

On the whole I’m really impressed with the Roku. At £55 it’s only just over half the price of the Apple TV, and can do just about everything its more expensive competitor can do, and more. The interface is simple and enjoyable to use, apart from the slight lag as mentioned earlier. I would definitely recommend it.

Purchasing a video streaming box

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Raspberry Pi

I’m planning to purchase a video streaming box – i.e. a thing that you plug into your TV to watch streaming video services. Now that we have Netflix I’d like to be able to watch films and TV shows on our TV, without having to run them through my Mac (which is also connected to the TV).

Things I’ve already tried

Last year I bought a Raspberry Pi, and for a while I used that to watch BBC iPlayer, but it’s not a great experience. It’s a bit slow and as I had XBian on a different SD card to everything else I had to shut it down, swap the cards and reboot it. The BBC iPlayer interface in XBMC leaves a lot to be desired, plus I’d been using a smartphone app as a remote which is a bit clunky.

Our Freesat box and Blu-Ray players also technically support BBC iPlayer, and the latter also supports YouTube, but they’re so fiddly and slow that they’re not worth using. In particular the remote control for our Toshiba Blu-Ray player is awful – it’s often unresponsive and the buttons are confusing.

Comparing video streaming boxes

A couple of weeks’ ago Pocket Lint did a good review of several boxes available in the UK. They looked at the Apple TV, Roku, Roku Streaming Stick, Sky Now TV, Google Chromecast, WDTV Play, Amazon Fire TV (not currently available in the UK), plus a couple of less-known Android-based boxes.

As much as I like Apple, the Apple TV is out of the question. It’s one of the most expensive boxes on the market, at £99, and doesn’t support many UK streaming services – iPlayer and 4oD are missing, for example. Though Apple does add new channels from time to time, there’s no schedule and no way of adding custom apps without jailbreaking. Apple really needs to consider creating an app store for the Apple TV if it’s going to be more than a niche product.

I also think that the Google Chromecast is a bit too basic. It’s useless without a smartphone or tablet, but it is cheap. And the WDTV Play, as you’d expect from a company like Western Digital, is more about playing content that you already have on your own hard disks, although Netflix is supported.

Sky’s Now TV box is by far the cheapest at £10, and is basically a re-branded Roku box, but without the ability to (easily) add other apps. Indeed, there’s no Netflix because it competes with Now TV, but it does offer the main British streaming services like iPlayer and 4oD. And Amazon’s Fire TV box is US-only at present.

Rockin’ the Roku

So that basically leaves the Roku devices. They support the largest range of streaming services, including all the big British ones. The only notable omission is Amazon Instant Video, which we don’t subscribe to. And you can easily add extra services with custom apps if needed.

The Roku 3 offers more features, such as both ethernet and wifi (and not just the latter), as well as a remote control that can be used with headphones. But it’s larger and needs its own power supply. The Roku Streaming Stick, though less powerful, can run from a USB port and can be hidden away behind your TV. It’s also significantly cheaper at £50, versus £100 for the Roku 3.

So, it looks like I’ll be buying a Roku Streaming Stick soon. In my opinion it offers the best platform support and the best value for money.

Joining Netflix

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A screenshot of the Netflix home page when logged in

Christine and I decided to sign up for Netflix last week. I’d been pondering it for a while but we decided that the price (£6 per month) was worth it considering the number of TV shows on offer. Unlike in the US, Netflix in Britain is online streaming only.

We’ve previously had a DVD rental by post subscription – originally with Amazon, which then got taken over by Lovefilm, and is now back in with Amazon again. That was £3 per month but we were barely using it. We were mainly renting films, and whilst we often have a spare half hour or so for a TV show it’s harder to find time on an evening for a film lasting two hours or more.

Amazon’s takeover of Lovefilm also meant that it was a lot easier to cancel. I almost cancelled Lovefilm a couple of years ago, but whilst on the phone I got talked into taking a cheaper package. Now Amazon just let you cancel in a rather nonchalant way online. I get the impression that Amazon see the DVD rental by post part of their business as a niche that it doesn’t have much of a future when compared to streaming.

Of course, Amazon has its own Instant Video service which does the same thing as Netflix, but we decided not to sign up; Netflix is available on more devices, and you can access everything on Netflix at no extra cost. Amazon, on the other hand, charge extra for some premium content.

What we’ve watched on Netflix

So far we’ve only watched a few things – in fact, Christine has watched more than me, mainly because I was out quite a bit last week whilst she was at home, on call. We’ve started watching Heroes together, as I never watched it when it was on, and Christine’s not seen all of the episodes. Considering it was shown in 2006, it already looks dated, with big CRT monitors in the background, non-smartphones and it being filmed in standard definition. Christine has also watched Grimm, and… Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Yeah. We’ll get around the watching Orange is the New Black as well at some point, as I hear it’s very good – and a Netflix exclusive.

Netflix’s library extends into the few thousands, although there are some interesting omissions. For example, the second Iron Man film is there, but not the first or the third. Such is the weird world of entertainment rights I suppose. Still, you get a lot for £6 a month, and you can dip in and out of series as you please. And there’s no DVDs to return.

So long, Thunderbird

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It’s with something of a heavy heart that I’ve had to give up using Mozilla Thunderbird for my email altogether. You may recall that I now use Airmail at home, but have been using Thunderbird at work. Sadly, Thunderbird is no longer fit for my purposes and so it’s had to go. I’m now using Outlook 2010, just like (almost) everyone else at work.

The reason for the change has been because of our move to Office 365. We’ve migrated from an old Unix system for email, and a proprietary calendar system called Meeting Maker, which also has various other nicknames not to be repeated in polite company. Meeting Maker was a separate application but the server had a CalDAV servlet which could also produce a subscribe-able internet calendar (.ics) file. And the email system was IMAP-based.

Office 365, however, primarily uses Exchange. IMAP and POP3 are provided for email, but it doesn’t support CalDAV for calendars, or CardDAV for contacts. So whilst Thunderbird would be okay for using just as an email client, I’d still have to go back to Outlook for my calendars – at which point, there’s no reason to carry on using Thunderbird.

‘But wait’, you may be saying, ‘you linked to a Provider for Exchange extension only last month!’. I did, but sadly I couldn’t get it to work, and development on it has ceased in any case. There was no way I was able to get my Office 365 calendars working in Thunderbird’s Lightning extension.

The really sad thing is that I’m not missing Thunderbird as much as I thought I would. Unsurprisingly, Outlook works much better when it’s used with an Exchange email server than a generic IMAP one, and it’s nice to be able to set out of office replies without having to go into webmail. It’s also a lot faster in my experience.

To me, Thunderbird’s problem is that it seems to be falling into a power user niche. It’s too big and complicated for basic users, or even people like me who want a relatively straightforward interface for use at home. But it also lacks enterprise features, like support for Exchange. And I’m surprised that Lightning is still an extension, rather than being offered as part of a bundle, given that Outlook comes as a complete package. It needs some love and attention, but with the Mozilla Foundation’s focus on Firefox and its Firefox OS phones, I can’t see it getting any.

My first BuzzFeed Listicle

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A screenshot of the 9 Surprising Facts About Sowerby Bridge listicle on BuzzFeed

Last week, whilst coming with ideas for a new blog post, I realised that one of them was essentially a BuzzFeed-style listicle. So, rather than posting it here, I decided to publish it as a community post on BuzzFeed. And so 9 Surprising Facts About Sowerby Bridge was born.

One of the main reasons why I did it was as an experiment, to see what kind of engagement community posts on BuzzFeed get. It’s something of a niche topic – I don’t know how many people would search for it, and I deliberately haven’t shared it on my own social media channels until now. Articles by BuzzFeed’s own journalists often do well with lots of clicks, but I’m under the impression that community posts can be somewhat hit and miss. We’ll see.

All but two of the photos were my own, linked to on Flickr.

In any case, I hope that it serves as an interesting look at my home town of Sowerby Bridge. It’s a town that’s overshadowed by its more famous neighbours of Halifax and Hebden Bridge, but has some of its own claims to fame. We’ve got Britain’s deepest canal lock, for example, and it’s possible to do a circular pub crawl taking in twelve pubs, almost all of which serve decent beer. There’s our annual Rushbearing festival, and we have a pretty good high street. It’s a surprising place and more people should take the time to come and visit, in my opinion.

A letter from me to myself in 1999 about the internet

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This month marks 15 years since I first used the internet at home. I thought I’d write a letter to myself, aged 14, about how things have changed since then.

Dear Neil,

Hello. This is a letter from 2014, 15 years into the future. Around about now, you will be using the internet at home for the first time, and it will be awesome. What’s more, is that as time goes on, it will get even more awesome, and the ways that you use the internet will change.

Firstly, it’ll get faster. Right now you’re using a 56k modem, and downloading a 10 MB file can take the best part of an hour. But in a couple of years time, you’ll get ‘broadband’, and that’ll increase your download speeds tenfold, to around 512 Kbps. Better yet, it’s ‘always on’, so there’s no need to dial a number and hear the modem make all of those screechy noises, and you’re not charged by the minute, so no more £40 per month phone bills for your parents to pay.

Although you will still hear the screechy modem noises in the future, I’m afraid. You’ll spend a couple of years in university halls of residence with them, and then share an office with a fax machine.

Eventually your internet connection will hit the lofty highs of 20 Mbps – yes, megabits, not kilobits. You’ll be able to use the internet to watch full TV programmes, and you won’t even need to use that ghastly RealPlayer software anymore. Oh yeah, and if you think RealPlayer is bad now then I have bad news for you, but hey, it gets worse before it gets better (i.e. you can get rid of it completely!)

The music industry eventually figures out how to sell music legally online so you won’t be using Napster for much longer. Hurrah! In fact, you don’t really buy CDs anymore. Next year, your parents will buy you a portable MP3 player – a bit like a MiniDisc player – because you’ll do well in your GCSEs. Just not necessarily in the subjects that you expect.

And soon you won’t even need a computer to use the internet. One day, you’ll buy a mobile phone, but with a big touchscreen that also has the internet – and, it works anywhere! In fact in some places it’s faster than the internet on your computer and you’ll be able to sit in a bus station and use the internet at 38 Mbps! Because you’ll still be using buses when you’re almost 30 as you still haven’t passed your driving test yet. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news.

In better news, you will eventually find someone to love, and who loves you back in equal measures. It’ll take a while, but you will get there and you will be happy.

Also, and you may find this utterly bizarre now, but you are writing this letter on Firefox, a descendent of Netscape, running on an Apple Mac. You will, in time, give up your reliance on Windows and Internet Explorer. Oh, and Apple makes your phone too. And a ‘tablet’ – a flat touchscreen device that doesn’t have a keyboard but let you use the internet and programs, and watch videos, which is pretty cool.

I’m sorry to say that all of the time you spent learning to code in BASIC turns out to be for little value. You’ll end up knowing the very basics of several languages, but nothing substantial, sadly.

So anyway, on the whole the future is pretty awesome. See you in 15 years!

Yours,

Neil

Kickstarted: reviewing the projects I’ve backed on Kickstarter

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Screenshot of my Backer History page on Kickstarter

Over the past two years, I’ve backed 12 projects on Kickstarter. All 12 have reached their funding goals, and I’ve paid out approximately £40 in pledges in total.

Some of those projects have now produced the products that they were raising money for, so I’ve decided to look back at each one, over the next few months. I’ll be writing about why I backed the project, and what I got out of it.

I’ll post the first entry next Sunday, and then a new one every Sunday until I’ve reviewed all of the projects I’ve backed. Obviously, if I back any additional projects in the next three months, I’ll tag those on the end too.

BT Home Hub 4 Review

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BT Home Hub 4

I’ve got my hands on a brand new BT Home Hub 4. This is the latest update to BT’s own-brand wireless router that it provides to its broadband customers. We’ve been with BT broadband since we moved to Sowerby Bridge in November 2010, and, apart from one broken promise regarding an activation date for the flat move we’ve had no problems.

During this time we’ve had an older model – the BT Home Hub 2 (model B), which is fine – but this newer model is better. Namely it supports dual-channel Wifi, so as well as using the 2.4 GHz channel, it supports the 5 GHz channel. Devices which can use the 5 GHz channel can therefore run at faster speeds – theoretically 300 Mbps is possible.

BT Home Hub 4 unboxing

Unboxing

I’ve posted a few unboxing photos on Flickr. The most interesting thing about the box is that it is designed to fit through a letterbox – therefore, customers won’t have to wait around for a delivery or have to retrieve packages from their local sorting office a day later. It didn’t fit through our letterbox, but that’s because we live in a flat and ours is tiny – I imagine most people with a proper letterbox will be fine.

Inside the box, the Home Hub is in one compartment, and the cables and manuals are in the other. You get a Cat5e ethernet cable, a modem cable, microfilter, and a USB wifi dongle. The dongle enables dual-band Wifi on computers which may not otherwise have it, although unfortunately it’s only compatible with Windows Vista, 7 and 8. The manuals are brief, and just cover what you need to set it up and some troubleshooting.

BT Home Hub 2 (left) and BT Home Hub 4 (right)

The BT Home Hub 4

Physically the BT Home Hub 4 is quite small – it’s wide, but shorter and thinner than the BT Home Hub 2, on the left in the picture. It also looks nice, which is what you want from a device that is most likely in your front room, and carries on the good design that BT have had in its routers. It’s also very light.

The back of the router has an RJ11 socket for the modem cable, and five RJ45 sockets. One of these supports gigabit ethernet, and three others support standard 100 Mbps 100BaseTX ethernet. The fifth is a WAN socket for BT Infinity customers – unfortunately BT haven’t upgraded our exchange for fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) so we have to use standard ADSL. There’s also a USB port, for which there’s no documentation but apparently you can connect a printer or hard drive to it and it will be shared across the network. And finally, unlike our current model, the BT Home Hub 4 has an on/off switch, so there’s no need to pull the cable out.

On the top, there’s a reset button, and a button to use WPS – Wifi Protected Setup. This allows compatible devices to automatically configure themselves without needing a password, and indeed the USB wifi dongle provided also supports WPS. And there’s a holder for the card with your SSID, default wireless key and admin password, which is handy.

Once everything is plugged in, it’s time to turn it on. There’s a pleasant single light at the front, which initially glows green, then orange whilst starting up, and then blue when it’s ready to go. If there’s a problem, then some red or orange icons appear in the silver strip below. This is different to the BT Home Hub 2 where there were five icons that were illuminated all of the time.

Connecting for the first time

The first page of the setup screen for the BT Home Hub 4.

The first time a device connects, the web browser is redirected to a setup screen. By default, this happens with every new device, although thankfully a mobile-optimised version is available for smartphones. You can turn this off later so that new devices connect straightaway. The main purpose of this is to ask whether you want to install parental control software, as current UK guidelines for ISPs seemingly require.

The admin panel

BT Home Hub admin error

Logging into the admin panel for the first time gave me an error: ‘Sessions Number – no more than 100 sessions at a time are allowed. Please wait until open sessions expire.‘ Clicking ‘Retry’ or any of the options didn’t make any difference. This problem affects other BT Home Hubs, but thankfully it’s easily solved by doing the usual thing of turning it off, and then turning it back on again.

The admin panel on the BT Home Hub 4 is largely unchanged from previous models. Whilst BT have dramatically redesigned the outside, the admin panel uses the same basic design as before, but with a few more advanced settings to go with the extra features. However, the default settings are pretty good for everyone so there’s no real need to change them. OpenDNS users may be disappointed that it still isn’t possible to change the default DNS servers on the BT Home Hub 4.

Speed

BT Home Hub admin panel - speed

The device reported that it had managed to connect at a very reasonable 23.15 Mbps downstream – faster than the BT Home Hub 2 which managed around 17 Mbps. Upstream speeds are low but this is to be expected on a consumer-grade ADSL connection. We’re fortunate that we live very close to our exchange – we’re only around 200-300 metres away.

Speedtest.net results

And thankfully the actual speeds aren’t far off – here’s a link to my SpeedTest.net result. Essentially 20 Mbps, which is a notable improvement, and not far off the limits of ADSL technology. I also pinged www.google.com 20 times and the average round trip time was 23ms; the longest was 25ms so it’s pretty consistent.

As for Wifi speeds, they seem fine. We have five Wi-fi devices in our flat – my Mac Mini, iPhone 5, iPad, Christine’s Acer laptop and Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone. My iPhone 5 and iPad both support the 5 GHz channel, but the others don’t – which in the case of the Galaxy S3 is a little odd in my opinion. We briefly tried the USB Wifi dongle on Christine’s laptop but it didn’t seem to like it – I may need to do some further investigations. My iPad still had a good signal at the furthest point away from the router in our flat, which is a distance of around 20 metres with several walls in the way.

One minor disappointment, from a geek perspective, is that the BT Home Hub 4 doesn’t appear to support IPv6, either on the home network or on the internet.

Summary

Overall I like the new unit. It’s smaller size is nice, and it looks good. Most importantly, it seems to perform well, with good speeds both on the internet and the home network. New BT Broadband customers will get the BT Home Hub 4 as standard, and existing customers can currently upgrade for £35, plus an extra £9 for the USB Wifi dongle.

My unit was given to me for free by a PR company acting on behalf of BT, in return for writing this review. However, these are my honest opinions, and I would recommend the upgrade if you need faster or more reliable Wifi speeds.