Netflix starts offering Internet downloads

Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 by MegaZone

I just picked this up from Gizmodo.

Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today introduced a new feature that allows people to immediately watch movies and television series on their personal computers and said it will make the new feature available to its subscribers in a phased roll-out over the next six months.

The service is limited to 1,000 titles currently, and it will be a phased roll-out so limited numbers of members will have access at first, and available to all by the end of June.

I wonder if the TiVo/Netflix partnership is dormant, or completely dead.

The instant playback technology described in the Netflix press release strongly reminds me of how Slingbox works, scaling for the available bandwidth. And it reminds me that Sling Media just announced that the new SlingCatcher will have a hard drive add-on, and is designed to receive broadband content too. Hmm…

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • buran

    Worthless if it doesn’t do closed captions and work on Macs. But I can’t see myself wanting it even if it does, because why exactly do I want to sit at a computer when I can use my HDTV with the comfy couch instead?

    When these download services realize that watching movies on a computer is lame, and that they need to make their stuff burnable to disc WITH CAPTIONS, and be available for more than just Windows users, they might get some use. Until then … why?

  • tenaciousdoll

    That’s funny, I was going to reply to his post with the very same sentiment (well, the one about closed captions, not Macs).

  • megazone

    Well, like it or not, Windows rules the market so a lot of such services end up being Windows-only, or at least Windows-first. I would think Mac users would be used to that by now. Linux users just accept they’ll have to do it themselves. ;-)

    Closed captioning is a big deal that most of these services ignore. I suspect the source they use doesn’t include captions and they don’t see it as worth spending the money to do the captioning themselves. I think the best course of action is to write letters to the services directly – polite letters that lay out why it is important.

  • anonymous

    As a parent of 3, I have to say I require closed-captioning. Trying to watch any show without means I’ll be rewinding wayyy to often….