I used to always tune out when I heard talk of Netflix. They are prominent sponsors of a lot of good podcasts I listen to, but the service was never available in the UK. It sounded like heaven - pay a reasonable monthly subscription and get access to anything you want to watch. Films and TV, you could watch the same thing over and over, or whizz through fifty different TV shows. It’s flexible and it sounded ideal. But it wasn’t available in the UK.

Until now.

Using Netflix will mean different things to different people. It’s available via browser, but I haven’t installed Microsoft Silverlight yet and I don’t intend to start now. It’s available on the iPad, which will be my primary method of consumption, and it’s available on the Apple TV, which looks great but is not working so well for us at the moment. It may be available by other methods, I have not checked.

So, for me, it’s all about the iPad and it becomes another way of consuming media as I multitask. Not content with UK apps for iPlayer, 4OD and ITV (which isn’t the most user-friendly experience!) I now have more to play with.

The selection somehow managed to be both over- and under-whelming at the same time. There’s none of the really massive named shows, such as Ugly Betty or Glee, but it has the equally intriguing Dexter and Scrubs. I can catch up with old BBC shows I’ve been thinking about rewatching - Robin Hood - or get a good dose of comedy from days gone by - Coupling.

In film news, there are some relatively up to date things, like The Men Who Stare at Goats, but it also has Armageddon which I can watch a million times over. We have already managed to consume an awful teen movie that was so terrible it was great and the service has only been out a week.

Thankfully, the launch coincided with my feeling under the weather, so I was justified in watching an extra hour or two of TV. Now that I’m back to full strength, I don’t know how much time I can give to even more content. However, I do think I will keep my subscription going when the free trial expires, and I can’t wait to see how often the content updates and what other things may appear on there.

Not that there isn’t enough to keep my going all year, anyway.