Shows on-the-go

Video-on-Demand streaming services have come a little late to our part of the globe, but things have certainly changed the last couple of months. In the west, Netflix has dominated the landscape and its success has allowed amazing, original TV shows like House of Cards and Daredevil to exist. In the far east, Malaysian-based Company, Catcha Group, looks to do the same with Southeast Asia and the Philippines with their own own streaming service called iFlix.

Content is King

iFlix has partnered up with some of the best studios in the US to be able to provide the Philippines with premium content with shows like the The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, White Queen, Black Sails – the list just goes on and on. We’re talking about 10,000 hours of content readily available to subscribers whenever you want. Parents will be pleased to know that there is a Kids Mode and parental controls to make sure the little ones don’t watch shows with adult content or themes.

Pirates Abound

Let’s be realistic. We all know that we all torrent most, if not all, our favorite TV shows from the US and that’s something that the team of iFlix covered during our brief talk. Regardless of the pirates in our so-called waters, Country Manager of iFlix, Sherwin Dela Cruz, is confident that their service will fly despite the prevalence of these other means. His main point being that we don’t always have the content available on our laptops, tablets, or phones when we just want to take a breather from our busy lives to watch an episode of your favorite sitcom.

Having content on demand also eliminates the need to wait for a few minutes or hours, depending on your home connection, for something you want to watch impulsively before sleep or private moments on your “Iron Throne”.

First Impressions

We were lucky enough to be invited to try out the service a few days before they launched publicly and it was a blast going back to some of our favorite shows and movies that we haven’t seen in such a long time. Just like Sherwin said, it was perfect for those times when you have time to kill or need to keep your nephews entertained when their getting antsy in the car.

You can watch shows on your laptop and app is available for both the Android and iOS faithful. You can register up to 5 devices per account. The site and app itself is clean and easy to navigate through, but there were a few bugs here and there. Video resolution adjusts automatically depending on the bandwidth available to you, so expect video quality to get a bump up or a bump down when someone decides to download in the middle of your show.

The Verdict

As mentioned, iFlix is not without its hiccups, but it’s something to be expected for a service that has just opened its doors. The burning question here is: “How much is the subscription fee?” We have been teased about the final price for a few weeks with their team saying that we had to wait but it’s definitely affordable.

They finally released their price for monthly subscriptions and it’s set at P129. At that price, iFlix is definitely worth subscribing to and we are excited to see what content will be added in the future as they gain more popularity with users.