Family Fight - Mystery Netflix Watcher?

[robtoe]

Like most, we've been watching Netflix a bit more as a family recently, and it recently caused a bit of a fight.

We watched the first show of a BBC series the previous night, and settled down to watch the 2nd episode that evening.   Upon launching the app, we saw that the red viewing progress bar was now completed for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th episodes.

People started accusing each other of watching ahead, all of us swearing we hadn't.   We then started noticing this on other shows, some of them watched as a family, some watched individually.    We got to the point of laughingly calling it the Mystery Netflix Watcher.

Last night the reason dawned on me, and it relates to how streams are handled by our Xi6 TV boxes.   When you press the "Off" button on the latest Ignite controllers, it is really just turning off the TV, while the Xi6 holds the stream until it is torn down 4 hours later.    This is discussed in another Rogers thread here.

We found that a certain family member would merely "turn off" the TV when we finished watching Netflix (during credits).    This meant that Netflix would auto-run the next episode, and this would continue until the stream is stopped 4 hours later (due to input inactivity on the Xi6).

I might have noticed this earlier, except that we only saw 3 BBC shows being watched mysteriously - not 4 (hours).    Then I realized each show is more than 1 hr long.

So, I wanted to post this in the hopes of avoiding future family squabbles for anyone else.   Just ensure you Pause first, or back out of the Netflix menu by a level (to avoid auto-run) before turning things "Off".  😀

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[Biollw]

Best bet when finished watching an episode netfix or any other program on an app is to exit that app and go back to the regular programming. Then auto-play will not happen.  I always exit all even exit the guide before turning off.

Is there a setting in netflix to set auto-play next episode to off? I am not sure.

[robtoe]

Yep, mentioned that tip in my post.  🙂

The Settings in the Netflix apps are super-limited, and amount to some basic account settings.   Have not found a way to disable autorun/autonext.