Subscribed to Presto for a free 3 month membership.
Cannot see me lasting the 3 months. I was getting jaded with Netflix selection so decided to try Presto, I am NOT impressed. Less than a day and I am already bored. There is very little that Presto has that Netflix doesn’t but there is a LOT that Netflix has that Presto doesn’t. For example, under SciFi & Fantasy Movies Presto gave me an option of 75 movies the vast majority of which are old, Netflix – 141 options. The same goes for most other genre’s as well. To top it all off though Presto cost more per month than Netflix. This is Presto’s premium package but my Netflix sub is their budget package. This stands to reason really as Presto is part owned by Telstra which has a reputation of NOT giving value for money (ie make as much money as possible for the shareholders and screw the customer, this is of course only my opinion, cannot afford to be sued by them).
Another issue: The resolution on Presto is not great, certainly not true HD.
UPDATE 22 JAN 16: Installed the Presto APP on my phone this morning. Browsed through and was amazed at the number of different suggestions that did not appear on the Web version, unfortunately that was all I was impressed with. I noticed that they had Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012– ) and it was due to expire in a few days so I decided to watch a few episodes. Wish I could – did not matter which episode I selected it played for about 20 seconds and then stopped ??? WTF. This cannot be caused by my phone as I can play YouTube and Netflix without any issues – another mark against Presto.
As a side note – how did they come up with the name “Presto” ? Sounds like they think it’s magic. Got news for you guys – it’s not.
For the Web versions I prefer the Netflix controls over those for Presto, or I should say the lack of controls in Presto. With Netflix you can use the mouse, arrow keys, media control buttons, spacebar etc.. With presto you can use ….. the mouse, media buttons do not work, keys do not work. When using Netflix the left and right arrow keys can be used for rewind and fast forward but in Presto they have no affect what so ever meaning the mouse has to be used which is no where near as accurate.For example, play back crashed while I was watching a program and when I restarted it it had returned to the beginning, the first time I clicked on the progress bar (a good 10 to 15 mm from the current position) instead of jumping forward it jumped back to the beginning, this happened numerous times. Also while accessing the progress bar on Netflix and YouTube the time of the location is shown, with Presto it is not. How can you fast forward, rewind or jump to a specific place/time in Presto – guess each and ever time ? The fail marks are piling up for Presto.
Picture resolution: Ran Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries season 1, episode 1 in Netflix and Presto at the same time. The resolution on Netflix was a lot better than Presto’s. With Netflix you can select your default resolution (I set it to 720 as I could not see enough difference with 1080 on my monitor, to justify the bandwidth usage, TV is a different matter – BIG difference). I could not find any corresponding selection for Presto.
Have not tried Presto with Chromecast yet but not getting my hopes up.
UPDATE 23 JAN 16 16:20: Just tried with Chromecast – VERY unimpressed. Could not play anything, all I get is a blank screen (monitor and TV), appears to load but does nothing. That is it, Presto is done. Have cancelled my subscription after less than a week. Biggest load of garbage and biggest rip-off I have ever encountered.