Netflix Instant Watching is really neat
Thursday, August 16th, 2007 - 1:57am
Has anyone else used the Netflix Instant Watch feature? It's a relatively new service for Netflix subscribers that allows you to watch DVDs on your computer rather than having them sent by mail. It's more or less free - you get as many hours of DVD watching as you're already paying for Netflix service ($16.99/month = 17 hrs of instant watch per month, for example).
There are a couple of features that make it worth trying. First, it actually works, and works well. No waiting 15 minutes for it to buffer only to deliver a choppy mess, no timing out in the middle of watching something, no adware-laden software download. Open Netflix up in Explorer, pick out the movie you want, and it's up full-screen within seconds. It may ask you to upgrade Windows Media Player, run a MSI or download a codec, but that's about it. We use an ancient box that barely runs Windows XP, over a entirely average networked cable internet connection, and it's generally smooth as silk.
Second, the movie lineup is surprisingly good. Some of the better-known titles available are: Pan's Labyrinth, The Italian Job, The Office (both US and UK versions), Casablanca, Heavy Metal, Red Dwarf, The Matrix, Primer, Super Size Me, Project A-Ko, Night Watch, The City of Lost Children, Dead Like Me... the list goes on and on, and seems to be updated every week with a couple of dozen new entries. Lots of great BBC stuff for some reason. I was particularly delighted to see them put up The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark (a MST3K alumni project) only a week or so after it came out on DVD. They appear to be trying some other experiments with the service as well, like a preview of the new series "Californication" well before it started its pay TV run.
There are some caveats, however. It only runs on Internet Explorer, so Mac/Linux users and the IE-phobic are completely locked out at this point. Apparently, Microsoft has provided a studio-mandated DRM solution for Windows but there's no such software available for the other platforms. Given that they're competing with Apple TV, there's not much hope for non-MS users.
You also don't really get the full DVD experience. No special features, no subtitles/captions, no 5.1 audio. I couldn't care less, but that's a big problem for videophiles.
In addition, there's an awful lot of garbage on the service. A high percentage is from 1/5 star bargain bin, and the studios have clearly elected to use it as a way to get people to try movies that they wouldn't bother to rent. Still, there's a huge amount of good stuff to be found if you're willing to sift.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
--Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
Ok, who's going to be the first to call KillerTomato a plant?
All this science I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week.
Sounds cool. It's too bad it won't work on my mac.
The darkness comes and the darkness goes
Last.fm
And that's where you lost me. I refuse to let WMP take over my computer. I prefer to just use Winamp.
Not that I'm a Netflix subscriber in any case.
"I'm absolutely retarded. Not 100% sure why." - atom
"Dhelor + intarwebs = Great ideas." - wordsmythe
"Do I what I do: hate everyone." - Quintin_Stone
I've used it and I like it. My biggest issue is the limited library which you already mentioned.
On a side note, I just got an email from Netflix stating that they're lowering prices again.
Semper Delectatio
Xbox Live - Cannibal GWJ XFire - cannibalcrowley
Strawberry Shortcake bricked my 360 on December 17, 2008.
i thought it was a good service too. it worked really well even on my crappy old PC. The selection wasn't quite as good as KillerTomato described back when i had netflix, but it's been a few month since i canceled my account.
i might just sign up for it again. i prefer netflix's service and the movie streaming over blockbuster's "return-your-movie-in-store" gimmick.
Xbox Live: NOVOCAIN1217
DUH, he's a TOMATO!
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Hm, what's the new pricing? We left Netflix to go to Blockbuster years ago when BB was a bit cheaper, plus they have the option to trade in at a local store (which we're very close to).
I think I remember that Blockbuster was introducing a service like this, though I don't know any details.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
That gimmick is a pretty useful. It gives you the ability to browse the shelves and still have the other convenience of the huge online library (though netflix's library is deeper than Blockbusters from what I've seen).
There must be a heating up in this segment of the market, because I noticed recently that Charter, my local cable company, is now offering 10-15 free movies each month as part of its video on demand movies. Mostly it's not prime stuff, but I saw 2-3 titles that looked interesting. And supposedly the line up changes next month.
Pan's Labyrinth is on there now? Sweet!
I was excited to see City of the Lost Children on the list as well. You can never see that one too many times.
Xbox Live: CrankyBaby
baggachipz: Who cares about Japan, let them have their silly pointless dog games and countless re-hashes of anime-based dragon princess super lucky crapitty crap.
Its a weird mix of movies all right. I'd never heard of the H.P Lovecraft short film Dreams in the Witch House til I was browsing the Instant Watch section. Not really a good movie, but interesting...and a quick boob shot.
I'm still waiting to get inside something, so for the moment, it's been very much "poke around the ravine." - rabbit
The most recent drop was $1 which leaves me at $12.99 for 2 at a time.
Has Blockbuster improved their site any in the past few months? That and the way they handle series discs always irked me.
Semper Delectatio
Xbox Live - Cannibal GWJ XFire - cannibalcrowley
Strawberry Shortcake bricked my 360 on December 17, 2008.
I wonder if they're only doing it for certain customers. I just checked my account and I'm still being charged $13.99 for 2 at a time, and it says that it's going to stay that way for my next billing cycle. It may be because my next billing cycle starts on the 18th and it only goes into effect next month or so. I know that there was an article about another price drop on digg, it seems that Netflix is really getting aggressive against Blockbuster.
I tried to use the instant watching feature, but my computer wouldn't run the player properly. I think it might have been due to a bug with a Nvidia application (which was causing numerous problems) so I'll have to try it again. I'd echo that the selection was pretty poor (at the time) as well.
Xbox Live - fuzzybunny81
Not that I've noticed. It's still a weak point with them. Finding stuff can be dicey at times, and it has always amazed me that you can find like, Season 2 of a show without them showing the other seasons as related content.
Don't know FuzzyB, I got the drop as well: $2 off 3 at a time.
I have to agree with KT on this: I didn't see much I haven't seen already, or that was worth seeing, but it works surprising well if you have Vista, or an up to date XP system.
Blog: GameFinance
Twitter: justinmwhitaker
hehe wouldn't a tomato have to be a plant?
edit: damn i didn't notice Quintin_Stone beat me to the bad pun
Netflix is a really... weird company. I've been a member for a few years and without a single complaint from me, i received a free month on a class action law suit (i guess they settled on an accusation that they didn't deliver as fast as they advertised, i never noticed) and they've dropped my subscription price twice. they also added the above mentioned instant watch thing and had a contest to improve their recommendations algorythm.
it's almost as if they care about customer service.
contrast this to f*cking com(mie)cast. My bill has gone up twice this year (once at the beginning of the year and I just got a friendly letter saying the service fee for their pathetic dvr "service" is going up another 3 bucks). I've maybe logged 12+ hours so far this year on service complaints, tech issues, outages and replaced my box for a faulty DVR hard drive thrice. This doesn't count the 5 days I spent trying to find out why my HDMI cable just stopped working one day: At tech's suggestion I replaced the box (an entire saturday blown), replaced the cable ($75), sent my TV back to get it looked at (under warranty but $125 shipping), and it still wouldn't work. I have a feeling it's some kind of shady DMCA firm ware upgrade that happened to make my TV off the list of "approved" devices, but they wouldn't confirm or deny my suspicion.
in short, dear netflix: please offer cable.
For Mac fans worried about being left out, I thought I just read something tonight (on Digg, I guess?) saying that they were working on a Mac soultion.
xbox LIVE: NatsuMatto
That's What She Said -- A Podcast About NBC's THE OFFICE
Follow me on Twitter: SommerMatt
I'd say that I'm technically a fruit, but I think that'd be tailor-made for OOCT...
To expose my plant-ish leanings fully, let me also sing glorious praises to Netflix's recommendation system, which makes every other site's implementation look poor in comparison. Once you get a couple of hundred movie ratings in the system, it becomes almost spookily accurate in predicting what you'll think of any given movie. It's dug out plenty of hidden gems that I'd never have found otherwise (Eat Drink Man Woman, Fruits Basket, and The Lost Room, among others), and warned us away from terrible movies that somehow managed to garner good overall ratings. Oh, god, if only we'd listened about Little Miss Sunshine...
Oh, and they just sent out an e-mail dropping the 3-at-a-time rate by $1 for the second time in as many months. Netflix is one of the rare services that regularly exceeds my already high expectations.
I have the same problem when I tried my main desktop. Works fine on every other computer, but this one throws a javascript error on the speed detection screen and refuses to go any further.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
--Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
Is there a way to stream this through the Xbox 360 to the TV? Or is that asking too much?
Lag used to be a lot worse back in the day. Hell, it took Jesus 3 days to respawn.
Quintin_Stone wrote: The typical American eats 3.5 bigfoots in their sleep each year.
PSN: x93_confirmedx (message me for Socom!)
I hope you're not suggesting that fruit does not come from a kind of plant? Unless you harvest your tomatoes from some sort of bio-engineered lemur?
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Right now, I believe you'd have to hack the system to get that to work. They mentioned in a recent interview, however, that they're working on bringing Instant Watching to the TV in some form or fashion. Maybe as a Tivo service?
I've said too much already... Suffice to say, there are more things in garden and field, Quintin, than are dreamt of in your philsophy.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
--Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
Here here. My wife and I are literally like 5 channels of instant TV gratification away from being able to go completely to DVDs. We could shed Comcast so quickly if not for these channels.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
I gotta say, I disagree - I LOVE the return-in-store option. I use the mail rentals for my TV series (currently working through Psych, then Freaks and Geeks is next) and then take those discs in to get whatever new releases are out that week. It's a good system, especially considering I love about 4 minutes away from a Blockbuster, and it's on my way to/from school.
I don't think the download option would work for me, unless I could figure out a way to easily stream to my TV. My PC is in my room and my laptop is a Mac, plus I'm really not one to sit around and watch a movie on my computer - mostly because it's a LOT more comfortable to sit on my couch in front of the TV than in a chair in front of my computer.
But hey, to each his own.
XBox Live Gamertag: Warlockbert
This is why we have Blockbuster, however, I got an email this morning stating that they are changing their plan structures. We do the three-at-a-time plan for $17.99 with unlimited in-store "exchanges" and a free rental coupon once a month. The price and the through-the-mail quantity is not changing, but we are now limited to 5 in-store exchanges per month and NO free rental coupon. I'm not happy about it, but, for now, it is not quite enough to make me change to Netflix. It did make me look at them, though. I suppose it wouldn't take too much more to push me in another direction.
Xbox LIVE: oldman GWJ
"I might have gotten away with it if it wasn't for a damningly tenacious clinger." - Crouton on a childhood excrement escapade
2007 GWJFFL2 Champion
2008 GWJFFL Champion
They've been fiddling with the plans for a while. At the beginning, I got two coupons a month for movies, not games. Then they offered the option of having one coupon a week, which was perfect because I could just give that to my son and let him get out a movie from the store while I got movies in the mail. Then they changed it to one coupon per month, but the coupon could also be used to rent a game. I got the email today about the plan changes, and they're cutting back my in-store exchanges to three a month. No word on the coupon.
It's been a great deal for me, but I might cancel and move to Netflix and use Charter's Video on demand for a while until Blockbuster offers me something better. I love the competition in this market!
Netflix might end up getting our money. I got the same email from Blockbuster saying (and I'm slightly paraphrasing here):
"THE HELL ASS BALLS." - Prederick, expressing frustration in the time-honored way.
I've got a solution for ya. get off that toy and buy a real computer! *puts on asbestos suit*
I don't know, how it'd work without a hard drive to buffer to. but I've got no clue wha tthe xbox can/can't do.
I haven't tried to run netflix via wii yet, but If Netflix supports opera it should. Mainly if I watch streaming video from netfli at all I just plug my tv straight into my PC (It has a VGA port, making it a ginormous monitor)
They're going to be switching the system over to Silverlight (http://silverlight.net/) soon, which will provide cross-platform compatibility.
New news on the Netflix Streaming front...
Someone mentioned this in the PS3/Xbox 360 thread, but I thought it deserved its own notice out of that context. I am really looking forward to streaming some decent video on my xbox.
LobsterMobster wrote: