I’ve belonged to Netflix for years, but have only just today realized that they now have movies online.
I did the setup and was soon watching 2010 to test it out. Good video quality, and not one glitch. It was just like watching a DVD. Granted, I’ve got fast internet here.
And interestingly, one DVD that’s on my wait list because it hasn’t yet been released, IS watchable online.
My only criticism is that they don’t seem to have promoted this very well. I just noticed the “Watch Now” icon by chance while I was checking my queue.
I think this is going to be the future of movies. Give them a couple of years and they’ll no longer be mailing DVDs.
I’ve been trying it out the last couple weeks. Unfortunatly my computer is far too slow to work well.
But yeah, it’s been a feature for awhile now.
You download the software needed to run them (it’s a specific kind from Netflix. Called the Netflix Movie Viewer or something like th at), and then you can watch them as long as they’re “availible”. But again, unfortuntely they put different ones out there and take others off on a regular basis…so I’ve heard complaints of people starting to watch movies and then, the next day, wanting to finish them, finding they’re no longer on the “watch now” list.
I’d rather watch movies on my T.V. than on my computer screen, but if there was a way to run a feed from the latter to the former, that would be great. Is there?
Yes; in fact, that’s how we have it set up. I’ve a homebrew DVR that sits next to my television, and I have conversion cables for both the audio and video (to composite). So far, after having watched one movie, it works fairly well. We have this system connected through WiFi, so we’ve had a few interruptions of the signal. In that case, Netflix will cache a chunk of the movie on your drive so you won’t keep getting interrupted.
Netflix advertises a little over two thousand movies you can watch through streaming, and you have to have an updated version of IE and Windows Media Player. This, of course, leaves out any non-Windows system. You also get one hour of video streaming for each dollar you pay monthly (not including taxes); so, if you have pay $18 for the three movie plan, you get 18 hours—roughly, about 9 movies.
I do think that this is the future as far as home video is concerned. I love my cable company’s “on demand” service. You select through a menu of movies and TV shows, most of which are free (the “new release” movies have an extra fee) and they are downloaded to your cable box where you can watch them for the next 24 hours. You can rewind, fast-forward, pause, etc. The line is already blurring between television and computers.
I have a PC feeding my 37" LCD monitor. I use this to watch the Netflix streaming videos. I have also watched some TV shows on my 19" LCD Monitor on my computer.
The service works pretty well, I have had occasional problems with it.
On the 19" monitor, about the same as the DVD. On the 37" a little blocky compared to the DVD or On Demand Cable, nothing too bad, but nothing great. It is a nice free feature if you are rigged for it or can rig it up easily.
I was already rigged to run several different applications, so for me, it was just a matter of getting it running.