Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking So last Friday, I logged off for the day, tracked down some Domino’s coupon codes and strapped myself in for the premiere. The pizza arrived in a paranormally short amount of time. As if it were teleported out of the oven and onto my doorstep. I picked up the shiny new Siri remote and hit play, sitting through a helpful season one recap and a less helpful hype trailer for the exact show I was about to watch, and then we were off to the races. But before I could even take my first bite of that piping hot Simply Cheese with extra cheese and cheesy stuffed crust, the lovable face of Jason Sudeikis froze mid-sentence. We did this dance for a while. I reset my modem, switched over to the less crowded 5 GHz WiFi channel and eventually resorted to my mobile hotspot. I managed to get through the first episode of Ted Lasso’s second season—which, just like my Domino’s pizza, was an absolute delight and maybe just a bit too cheesy—but the journey there was an excruciating process. The cold, stodgy pizza and the incredible waste of time could have all been avoided if Apple had let me download Ted Lasso ahead of time. I’m not alone. At last check, I was part of the majority of NBN-connected Australians on FTTN. One simple change from Apple, Netflix, Stan and every other major streaming services would make things a lot easier for me while I await a functional broadband connection: enabling offline viewing for streaming devices. Downloadable titles for offline viewing came into vogue after Netflix launched the feature back in 2016. The feature came about as a way to counter constrained bandwidth infrastructure. For Australians, it meant two things: 1) you could download TV shows and movies to your device before catching a flight and 2) you could avoid excess data charges by downloading titles before you left the house. Now most major services allow you to download TV shows and movies on your smartphone or tablet. For those of us on unreliable NBN connections, data limits aren’t an issue anymore, slow download speeds are. Until things improve, an offline viewing option for streaming devices with onboard storage like the Apple TV 4K would be a good band-aid solution. The Apple TV 4K has up to 64GB of storage but that’s only used for storing apps. The excuse seems to be that the Apple TV is a streaming device only but that’s not entirely true anymore. I can download games from Apple Arcade and play them without needing to stream them so what’s stopping Apple from enabling TV show and movie downloads? For Netflix and Stan, it makes sense that there might be some legal caveats involved with offline viewing for third-party titles. But in the case of Ted Lasso on Apple TV 4K, there are no third parties involved. It’s a top-to-bottom transaction with Apple and Apple alone. It seems crazy that you can pay a monthly fee for Apple TV Plus and up to $279 for a 64GB Apple TV 4K but downloading Apple TV Plus exclusives to that premium device is too much to ask. Meanwhile, Domino’s will bend over backwards to get a large Simply Cheese delivered to my door within 30 minutes for less than $20. Someone at Apple needs to take a page out of Domino’s CEO Don Meij’s book.
