The “instant viewing” program from Netflix — - streaming video for Netflix subscribers — - is supposed to be available to their entire subscriber network by June of 2007. I tried it out last night. It was awesome.
Netflix doesn’t yet have a particularly extensive collection in their instant viewing treasure trove, but it’s certainly substantial enough to provide items of interest for most audiences, with about 2,000 videos to watch across genres.
I watched a 45 minute television program at full screen on a monitor with 1400 by 900 pixel resolution. During the course of the viewing there were:
- 0 sound glitches
- 0 video glitches
The video quality was very acceptable for a TV sitcom. I’m not sure that I’d find something more exotically special-effects driven to be quite so satisfying, but that’ll have to be another test later! The relatively simple camera work and audio work of “Ballykissangel” were just fine.
The time between hitting “Play” and beginning to watch the video, including the download and install time for the Netflix video player was approximately 2 minutes.
Sweet. Now, if only Netflix.com were an accessible site…
I’ve also used Movielink, LLC
for instant viewing. It’s free to sign up and they have a lot of the big Hollywood movies that Netflix doesn’t have. Check it out.
Comment by Neal — May 31, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Looks interesting. Different pricing model, which has some definite advantages — - although, in a manner of speaking, the Netflix model is “free” at the moment.
Thanks for that link.
Comment by Joe Dolson (377 comments.) — May 31, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Hmm. I’m a NetFlix customer. I tried watching a trailer on their site and it wouldn’t let me… said I needed IE. Phooey.
Comment by Mike Cherim (101 comments.) — June 5, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Well, yes. That’s definitely a phooey. You can do it using the IE Tab extension for Firefox, although it’s a little more complicated. And, of course, you’re still using IE, fundamentally…
Comment by Joe Dolson (377 comments.) — June 5, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
For a really cool “instant” view site, REELTIME.com (US not Aussi) is very good. Fair selection(over 1500 titles currently, 100’s more weekly), great resolution, even for big screens! This is sweet! Netflix should be talking to them!
Comment by Frank Harris — June 18, 2007 @ 10:16 am