2023 has easily been the year I've travelled most post-pandemic, with a combination of holidays and press trips meaning that I've been through more airports than I care to count within the last 10 months. That's fine by me, as I'm an avid traveller and actually quite enjoy flying, but there's been one bugbear that has plagued quite literally every flight I've taken this year.
Let me set the scene. Usually the night before I fly, I like to peruse the various offerings found on Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video and download the options that look like they'll help me occupy my time on the asphalt and in the air. Once I set my shows and movies to download overnight, I expect them to be ready to go once I'm in flight (especially as I refuse to pay for the extortionate onboard wi-fi). However, each and every time I'm met with the same message: "Download failed." For reference, I'm using the iOS and iPadOS versions of the apps, so this could well be an issue with these versions of the apps – but nonetheless, it's frustrating.
So what's the solution? The only thing I've found that works so far is practically supervising the download until completion, hitting that retry button every time the download pauses or fails. That's both irritating and not feasible, as I have much better things to be doing with my time than overseeing the download of a TV show. Moreover, I shouldn't have to do that, as this feature should just work ideally.
