Netflix on Voom

[HallOfPromise]

I'm sailing on the Sept 15 cruise on Harmony and I'm wondering about Netflix and other streaming services over Voom. For those of you who have used these services, how were your experiences with them? Is the streaming constant and solid? Did you have all of your content available, even though you were outside the States?

[Rangerusa1111]

The past few times I have used Voom it worked. While watching football games or Netflix there were pauses and buffering occasionally. From my experience, if you want your streaming service to be exactly the same as it is at home that most likely will not happen. If you can deal with some pauses and buffering then it will meet your needs. We also turned on Wi-Fi on our cellphones (iPhones) and turned on airplane mode and had no issues calling all over the United States from the ships VOOM service.

[Merion_Mom]

Harmony is one of the better ships for finding consistently good VOOM connectivity and speed.

 

That having been said, it also depends on where you are on the ship (there are some dead or nearly dead spots or less than spectacular spots) and how many other people are also trying to scoop up some bandwidth.

[Jasukkie]

If cost of streaming service is an issue, we downloaded netflix content to a laptop and watched that way. Wish we could have cast to the TV but it didn't seem workable.

[rdsxgrl28]

I had no problems on Allure or Oasis. I was able to watch Netflix, HULU & Amazon prime, no problems

[Biker19]

Wish we could have cast to the TV but it didn't seem workable.

The TV is not on the same network as the WiFi so the only way to watch content on that is via a direct cable connection.

[tomatosauce]

On the Ovation is Asia things are a little slower. Streaming almost works but ends up having issues but downloading and wathing works perfectly.

[HallOfPromise]

Thanks for the input, everyone! Making all this researching very fun and easy for me! I have Netflix and Amazon Prime and hope to watch a few things during downtime in our state room or by the pools. Puts me in a state of relaxation.

 

I remember hearing a while back a heads-up that some of our content may not be viewable since the IP address may be out of the country. Then I heard contradicting reports of the IP addresses actually being US based. Judging from the lack of complaints, I assume everyone had all their content available.

 

So looking forward to this cruise!

[tomatosauce]

When you are in Asia (all the way from Hong Kong to Sydney via Singapore) the IP address that Netflix was seeing was from the Central African Republic which gives less variety than whilst in Hong Kong or the USA.

[payitforward]

I tend to fall asleep streaming my Amazon Prime. My experiences have been different in different staterooms on different ships. My content is always available. Most of the time it streams very well. On occasion, it will do a lot of buffering.

[KimA75]

I know you can download some movies ahead of time on Netflix. I believe you can on Amazon Prime as well. We downloaded before our last cruise and used this. Just make sure you download the morning of, or the night before. The downloads are time sensitive as far as how long they remain active.

[PinkLemonade]

I was on Anthem last year and I had no issues with using netflix on voom, it was just as if I were watching at home except that the screen was smaller because I only connected with my iphone and not a laptop like I normally would. It didn't seem to need time to buffer or anything it was just smooth and consistent. I was on a 13 night Caribbean cruise and no matter where we were (Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas, etc) it connected me to U.S. netflix.

[fredflint]

I suggest bringing HDMI adapters cables so you can watch on your on your TV I have a 2 input one output HDMI device so I can leave the TV connected to the ships network and use my HDMI whenever I want to I also have a few different HDMI adapters that have different right angles to make it easier to connect. I have Dish for my TV so I can download a lot of TV shows. I also stream so I can catch the news and any special shows along with Netflix and Amazon Videos. I used VOOM on the Allure during my Transatlantic. Streaming worked very well possibly dues to less competition for the bandwidth. Having sailed on Norwegian our last cruise with slow Internet we are going back to RCCL in March one of the reasons is VOOM on a 14 day cruise it adds up but we don't drink and so we spend a lot less overall than most other cruisers.

[Rogueperson]

I had no problems on Allure or Oasis. I was able to watch Netflix, HULU & Amazon prime, no problems

 

I've been on both the newer O3B ships and the non O3B.

 

Some streaming services work, and others, not so well. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon work because they are able to adapt to your speed.

 

On the non O3B ships, it takes a little bit to buffer, but once it does, it is usually (but not always) seamless. My Xfinity app did NOT work well. It could not adapt to the slow speed and stuttered annoyingly. However, I found that at times, the connection would drop in miduse and unfortunately, you would have to reconnect and reload, which was annoying.

 

The newer O3B streams better, but there were little issues when I did it on the Anthem. The one issue that kept popping up was that the stream would stop, but it wasn't buffering. It would just stop. You could scrub through the video and SEE that the data is there, but it would not play. When i went to the IT manager, he replicated the problem on his device as well. This happened during the two port stays I think. Not sure what caused it. Though, on Anthem, my Xfinity App did work fairly well.

[JasonMason]

I used Netflix on Enchantment back in March - worked great!

...I'd imagine on Harmony you would have a pretty solid experience since it uses newer technology.

[Ashland]

Just off Freedom in a JS deck #9. We couldn't change the HDMI input on the TV. Apparently we were told that it had something to do with the inter-active TV...Not happy since we brought our HDMI cable, universal remote and Fire Stick and assumed we would be able to do this as many people had posted..Luckily our cabin steward called an onboard electrician and he changed out the TV for us.

 

Once the TV was changed we were able to watch Netflix and Amazon Prime...some slight buffering at times and blurry picture at time but over all a positive experience.

 

With RCI now selling Voom/Stream packages they should make it easier to access the HDMI input on all of their TV's onboard. We were told on Freedom the GS and above on deck #10 didn't have this problem.