Lovefilm / PS3 first impressions? Not good got better
Posted by MattyRasker in Lovefilm
on Nov 11th, 2010 | 22 comments
UPDATE 05/01/2011 – It appears to me that the service has certainly improved for most, and the streaming is actually very good. The number of films available seems to be on the increase too, if only they could get that “Search more than the first 100 A-Z search” working! Anyway, I recommend you give it a try because the service is actually now pretty good – if you do want to sign up, you can sign up directly at Lovefilm, and then activate it on your PS3. Alternatively find out more details about it here. If you are unable to Activate your account, or you are having general issues with your account, you need to contact LoveFilm on 0844 482 0123. If you want to Deactivate your account, you need to log into it at www.lovefilm.com. Once you have chosen to deactivate your account, you are given a telephone number to ring to confirm your cancellation. This takes about 10 minutes so be prepared.
As mentioned in a previous post, I was never a fan of LoveFilm. My experience with them first time round was not a good one. Cancelling your account was probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life, and that includes changing a headlight bulb in my Renault Clio. But, with this brand new service to stream films to your PS3 for £9.99 (unlimited), how could I say no? All right, I’ll bite the bullet and give it a go.
So, I signed up for a 14 day free trial and that process was quite painless. You activate your Lovefilm account on your PS3 and you are all done. But, It’s about to get messy. VERY messy.
First of all, try browsing by genre. You go to the genre, lets choose comedy, and you are given the choice of “Highly Rated”, “Most Popular” or “All A-Z”. Cool, I want to view them all. Lets go to A-Z. So, you are quite happily scrolling down until you get to the 100th film in the list. You can’t go any further than 100. Maybe pressing L1 will work, no? L2? Down more? What, I can’t go pass D!? I want to view a film that begins with H, and even though I’ve clearly chosen browse all films A-Z, I can’t!? Who’s great idea was that? I can understand why you’d want to limit it to 100 when searching most popular or highly rated, but to limit it to 100 on the ALL FILMS search?
Then it really started going wrong. “Cannot connect to Lovefilm right now, please try again later”. Oh great, here we go. Lets go back a page. “Cannot connect to Lovefilm right now, please try again later”. Exit, go back in. Go to the search function again, same error message. Oh no wait, another one now, what does this say – “It appears you have deactivated your PS3 system via lovefilm.com”, Confirm or Cancel. What does that suppose to mean? When did I do that? Oh wait, I didn’t. Ok, I’ll click Cancel.
I then get taken back to the “Already got a Lovefilm account? Activate your PS3 system now!” Ok, I will…I put my login details in for my Lovefilm account for a second time (just underneath the message which says “You only have to do this once!”), I wait a while, and I get “It appears you have deactivated your PS3 system via lovefilm.com”. Well yeah, apparently so, so thats why I am choosing to ACTIVATE it. And then, it just goes back to the main menu. But, here is the great part…
There is no way to activate / deactivate your PS3 through lovefilm.com.
Anyway, fourth time (You only have to do this once, remember), I got it working. But boy, that was painful. But seriously, who’s idea was it to just show 100 search results under ALL A-Z? Seriously man. If they fix that, then this could be a seriously good app to have because, now that it is actually working now, the film collection is pretty impressive and for £9.99 for unlimited viewing (without games), it can’t be bad.
Having said that, I’ve not seen the quality of the streaming video yet…
22 Responses to “ “Lovefilm / PS3 first impressions? Not good got better”
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Hi there, It looks like I’ve got a similar problem. I’ve just found out about this new lovefilm feature on the ps3 and since I already have a lovefilm account it sounded like I was in for a treat. However, when I try to play any film I get that message you got, “It appears you have deacitvated your PS3 via lovefilm.com”. Obviously I press the canel button too and it then takes me straight back to the main menu. No matter how many times I try, I can’t get any film to play. Do you think I should deactivate my account from the “Settings” menu and try reactivating it again to see if it works?
Oh dear! Sounds like a Microsoft programmer is now working for Sony!
cb7 – I just kept on closing the application down, reopening it and going through the activation process. I eventually got there fourth time round, are you still getting the problem?
Stu – Either that or its build on a stupid Silverlight platform!
Yeah – looks like they have had a few teething problems. They sent out a message last night saying the service was over whelmed which probably means way too many more people trying to try it out than they had planned for…sounds like a few weird glitches they need to sort out…have you emailed your probs to them? I did and they came back to me really quickly (its was about not being able to work out how to exit their app!)
I suppose that would make sense as it was only released last night, but Sony had a similar issue when the MW2 add on pack came out – they got so overwhelmed that the payment system wasn’t working! I haven’t seen the message yet, and no I’ve not been in touch with them but I seem to be up and working now. I hope to spend most of this weekend catching up on some films I’ve wanted to see but never got round to it!
By the way, has anyone seen a way of keyword searching when browsing through the Watch It Now listings?
Hi Mat,
sorry I didnt get back to you sooner. I tried it again yesturday while I had the day off work and it works perfectly now. I don’t get that error message any more and it plays any movie straight away. Maybe their system was overwhelmed at the time or maybe there are a few bugs they need to iron out, but whatever, its working fine for me now.
As for the keyword searching etc, no there doesnt seem to be any way of doing that as far as I can tell. Hopefully they’ll fix this with an update, becasue it could do with something like that for sure!
chilledbreeze7
What were they thinking???
All working for me too now, in fact I watched V for Vendetta and thought it was incredible! The streaming wasn’t bad either. Appears they may have redeemed themselves somewhat. I’d like o see some recognisable titles now.
Matty
how could you be so lazy Matty? you’ve built a post around the logging in part and totally ignored the part about the more important `’streaming experience`
RAVI, very good point you make! Although I didn’t have a huge problem with the streaming aspect, it did stop once or twice for 5 seconds or so. The sound quality leaves much to be desired as well – sounds like you are listening to it inside a tin can of some kind.
I certainly won’t be carrying on with my subscription, but it was good while it lasted I think.
Cannot belive it 5 gig and it wont let me connect via my ps3 thought this online service through ps3 would be good sadly let down they said they would contact me but havent but i will keep trying
I’ve been using the PS3 version of Lovefilm now for a week and think it’s pretty damn good. The streaming is as good as you could expect for streaming, some films have less sound quality than others but none have affected my viewing pleasure. I think the initial post sounds a bit like a spoilt child whingeing. You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed jet planes when they were first “launched” because you had to wait to get on.
Anyway I found this page because I also want to know how to search past the first 100 films in the A to Z listing, if anyone knows how to surpass this I’d love to know. Otherwise it’s a great and revolutionary product in my opinion, let’s just report any flaws so it can be improved rather than writing it off in the initial stages. True film fans will agree.
Hi Sanchez,
Thanks for swinging by!
I don’t know what your experiences were on the day of release of LoveFilm, but my initial post was my first impressions and as much as I may have sounded like a whineing kid, it was a very frustrating night. But with all of that said, when I finally got into the service the streaming was, as you said, as good as you could expect and I watched V for Vendetta without any real issues at all!
I am surprised that you are still reporting the “100 films” error, I would have thought that a patch would have been out by now to fix that because that really needs to be fixed.
Totally agree, any fixes do report here with any links to updates!
Just read your post again Sanchez, you’ve been using it for a week so you didn’t try to use it on day of release – trust me, it was frustrating!
Got a reply from Dominic at Lovefilm today saying that he was “looking into the matter”.
Will post any updates if they arrive.
Great stuff, please do keep us posted!
Signed up for this when I first saw it advertised, worked very well for a while, then wanted to watch a film on a Saturday night and got the error messages detailed above. Called their customer service team who answered very promptly but were unable to resolve and passed on to their techs. Next time I logged in all ok so assumed the problem was fixed, tried again last Saturday but no go, same error messages, called up and was told the tech guys don’t work weekends ( wtf? ) why are the tec support guys not working on the day most people are likely to want to watch a film? I was told they would call me back today ( Monday ) they didn’t call and I phoned them back, it seems that they are aware of difficulty with PS3 users suggesting a problem with their servers, they are working on it.
Reading between the lines I think that the response to a months free trial has been greater than anticipated, they have extended my free trieal in recognition of the problems I’ve had but unless it gets a permanant fix I won’t be subscribing.
The good – when it works it’s a convenient way of accesing a lot of films relatively cheaply, I don’t want to be a pirate so would prefer to pay. Customer service is very good with phone answered quickly. The through the post rental is brilliant with films delivered the next day.
The bad – no tech support weekends or late evenings, it needs to be 24/7 as this is when the films are available. Frustrating menu so that when you choose to view a films details you have to go right back to the first page and not where you left off. They are not equipped to deal with the demand, this should have been anticipated, if I was giving away free films for a month I’d expect a deluge.
I the same as many chose the Love Film for ps3. Being honest the service has been very stable but not so in the early house. I keep getting error please try again. I checked my connection etc and all is good, so I wanna know what’s happening late night early morning?
As an addition to the post when looking for films by a-z method I get to films in alphabetical order up to about d, so anything after that I can’t see due to the 100 limit or am I missing something.
The films through post is a great service, however the watch now films is limited to older films. I like to keep up with current films and this is missed with the watch now service. If ntl can get releases out to watch quick, why not love film?
I’ve just started using the Lovefilm app on the PS3 and have given up it’s more trouble than its worth. Practically every time I’ve gone to stream a movie the Lovefim app forces me to run a system update and then when I finally manage to watch a film which has been once in four times trying it says I deactivated my PS3 account! Help from Sony hard to find, found it easier to google this problem. Putting a trusted dvd in the slot me thinks, much easier!
Signed upto lovefilm and having no end if problems with this ps3 app got past the you have deactivated ur console now the app fails to load and cs r useless
The problem with the only showing the first 20 pages (or 100 movies) is still ongoing and im totally frustrated by it. Ive spent hours on the the fone today being passed from one dept to another and no one can help me!
Do i need to change settings or something??
Im on a 6 month streaming trial that i bought for a tenner via groupon so i suppose i cant grumble too much, but i still expect it to work properly!
Hi Andy, nope the problem still exists, I noticed that – even with the updated front end. It’s unfortunately something we have to put up with! Crazy isn’t it?
Can’t fault the streaming service though, for me over my connection (most of the time doesn’t get over 3Mbps), it works fine.