A Christmas Netflix

A Christmas Netflix: a reader asks…

I got a gift membership to Netflix for Christmas, yay! It came in an email, so now what do I do?  I have a Firestick connected to my TV, and an iPhone and I’d like to use it on either.

So the first thing is to open that email and follow the instructions. That will have you create a user account on Netflix.com with a username (likely your email address) and a password (you should create a good, strong password). Once you’ve completed this all-important step, you can proceed to setting up Netflix on Firestick and iPhone.

With Firestick running on your TV, open the Neflix app. You’ll be prompted to log into your account. Use the username and password you used when setting up the account. Once logged in, the Netflix app will remember your login so you don’t have to enter in that info each time you watch Netflix. You can navigate the list of movies, TV shows and other video that Netflix offers. Use the Firestick remote to navigate through the app to watch movies, add them to your watch list, and scroll through the enormous Netflix library.

On your iPhone, you’ll want to visit the App Store, and download/install the free Netflix app. Once it’s installed, tap on the icon to run Netflix and log into your user account. Then you have pretty much the same experience as on the Firestick, only some buttons will be helpfully sized for your fingers and tapping on the screen will bring up controls (play/pause, stop, etc.). One nice thing with the app is that you can download movies and TV shows to your iPhone for watching later (rather than streaming the video). This can be really handy before airplane trips and/or whenever you’re away from a Wi-fi connection and want to watch Netflix.

You should know that Netflix is a subscription-based model, with a monthly cost. Likely your present was a one-year subscription, so a year from now you may be prompted to setup recurring payments to continue your subscription. If the person who gave you this present was very generous, the ongoing subscription may simply charge to their credit card, so you never need worry about the subscription cost.