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Netflix Now Offers Instant Online Movie Streaming
An anonymous reader writes "If you're the owner of a video rental store, it may be time to start thinking about getting into a different business, according to ZDNet. Netflix, the online movie rental service, is offering a new feature that allows its subscribers to instantly view movies and TV shows on their PC. From the article: 'Following a one-time, under-60-second installation of a simple browser applet, most subscribers' movie selections will begin playing in their Web browser in as little as 10 to 15 seconds. Movies can be paused and a position bar gives viewers the ability to immediately jump to any point in the movie. In all, the instant watching feature requires only Internet connectivity with a minimum of one megabit per second of bandwidth.' These movies are in addition to the standard DVDs you can have at home, it should be pointed out. You can see a demonstration of the service at the Hacking Netflix blog." Only a small percentage of customers have it available at the moment, but they hope to roll it out to everyone within six months.
This has definitely been a long time coming, but finally legal movie downloads are going the way of digital music, UP!
Don't think this is the end of Blockbuster and friends yet. They still have one -major- advantage over streaming.
The TV.
Until there's some way to put these videos on your TV without offending the MPAA (Not everyone has a HTPC), DVDs will always have the advantage. Not to mention the low amount of people I know that have the necessary bandwith for this service.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Somehow, I don't think that the brick and mortar video rental services are doomed just yet. There's a bit of a difference in picking up a movie with your groceries to watch it with the family on the big-screen in the living room, and downloading it so you can wait to buffer up enough to play it inside a web browser window with heavy compression on the small screen of the bill-paying appliance.
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Consumer demands will always be fufilled if there is a profitable way to do so. With all technology increasing exponentially over time there is no limit to how much progress we can make. There is also no limit to how much progress we want.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
(1) I use Linux/Mac. (2) I've got DSL, 50-80 Kbyte/s max. (3) How do I stream it to my 27" Sony tube TV? (4) Why do I want lower than DVD quality? (5) Why do I want a smaller window to actually find time/watch the movie?
I will not watch a full movie on my PC. That's what I have a home theater setup for. I already have Netflix and I'm excited because I will be able to evaluate a movie before I put it in my queue. I'll watch the first 20 minutes of the movie and decide if it is worth investing more time.
I like the way Netflix is doing this. Rolling it out as an additional, no extra fee, feature of their service shows that they are ready to start the next generation of film viewing, and that they realize that this service is not presently ready to fully replace their current model.
Good job Netflix!
The main reason that I use Netflix (as opposed to downloading movies over Bittorrent) is that I have a nice TV, surround sound system, etc. and prefer DVD quality as opposed to anything you can get over the internet. Until Netflix can offer a similar service over the internet (at least 480p, 5.1 surround), I'm not that interested.
- Closed captioning.
- Big ass TVs that aren't connected to the 'net.
- Being able to take it to a friend's house.
The sweet spot for me for a service such as this will be when Apple releases a Mac mini with an HDTV tuner for convenient way to get a movie from my PC to my television where I can watch movies from the comfort of my couch with my decent stereo cranked up enough to make the bass notes of the soundtrack rumble through the floor. Not to mention, it makes it hard to rent a flick to take on the road to a friend's house or for the kid's watch on a long trip in the car. Consequently, I think the bricks and mortar rental places have plenty of time to keep making a substantial profit.I don't think I'll use the service all the time, but I wouldn't mind using it if the quality is somewhat decent.. I don't know whether or not Netflix will do this, but I'd like to pay for the movies as I watch them.. Optionally.. I'd gladly pop in my CC#, and pay like $1-$3 bucks for a one time stream that would let me watch it for up to 3 days.. I don't watch movies enough to pay someone a monthly fee.. but if i'm feeling lazy, and want something quick, then this might be the way to go.. I guess it also will depend on whether or not we can actually Full Screen the stream..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
It happens to XM all the time, songs ripped directly from the stream. How long before amazon and netflix and whoever else face the same problem? I can see these streaming movies cancelled once the RIAA and MPAA get wind of the number of streamgrabbers out there. How easy would it be, really? Now we burn netflix DVD's in about 2 hours, imagine how many people would signup for netflix if they could burn (or save to ISO) the movie AS THEY WATCH IT? This has 'Netflix, meet shark' written all over it. 12 months tops before prices skyrocket due to theft or it's cancelled completely. Just saying.
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I hear what you're saying, I really do. I use a notebook, which is easy for me. Before I used my notebook, I used my PC and a long video lead - no problems there. The PC is in another room, so there's even less clutter than a DVD :)
For those who don't have a computer to stream to, there are a host of STBs that allow streaming across your network. If these feeds are RTSP, then they can most likely be brought directly to those boxes.
And as for taking your media with you, I take ALL my media wherever I go, as I have an RTSP streaming server set up at home, which can broadcast or stream selected media across my internet connection, transcoding to whatever video/audio codecs and bitrates required. That's a LOT easier than carrying around 200 DVDs, containing the only copies of my actual movies.
Optical media is sooo last century it's not even funny. The answer is staring us all in the face - networks. Having a movie on a physical disc makes the movie less useful. We get pissed off with DRM, but then there are even more techincal barriers imposed on our fair use by the actual media. The network alleviates those problems in an instant - it does require a wee bit of flexibility on the up-taker's part, but then every single technology did too.
...and every time I set foot in Walmart to buy a $10 item I end up getting at least $100 worth of crap. Same thing with Youtube. I go there to watch one video and end up wasting 2 hours watching other crap. Your analogy was better than you first thought.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
I know that's a joke, but isn't it true? With Blockbuster and others most likely following suit, the internet is going to get pretty clogged.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
This really illustrates the argument over net neutrality: Netflix's service (almost) directly competes with your cable company's video-on-demand service. But, what has to be even more galling to the cable companies, the Netflix service does it by sending video over cable company's own network! (Assuming you get your internet through a cable modem.) No wonder they want to treat different providers differently.
The problem, of course, is that since most "high-speed" residential internet services still don't provide truly high-speed service, the quality of this Netflix service is probably nowhere near as good as the cable company's video-on-demand service. And, that gives the cable company a big disincentive to upgrade their data network -- as soon as they do, somebody will use that upgraded network to "steal" customers from their other services.
Because most phone companies also want to provide video over their high-speed networks, the probable end result of this will be that so-called "high-speed" providers will slow their deployment of faster Internet connections. Competition is the only real cure for this.
The salient point being that these solutions are not wide spread and there are large obstacles to widespread adoption. Consequently, the video rental store has quite a bit of life left.
He's not surprised, he's disappointed. As am I.
I was just thinking the same thing. I expected this sort of news from Netflix to include a Tivo announcement. It seems I can never be too shocked to learn that Tivo isn't taking full advantage of their network+TV connection. Maybe they have been fighting with cable companies too much.
Consumer demands will always be fufilled if there is a profitable way to do so.
Yes, but profitable for whom? If the network operators see only costs and Netflix sees only profit, what do you see happening?
...Steve
This is a good next step for Netflix. Here is a partial list of what they have done so far:
Before there was widespread broadband we had a "last mile" problem that everyone was talking about. Now, many here are complaining about the "last room" problem of being able to watch this on their TV. I, for one, am glad that Netflix is not yet trying to solve this problem. It leaves it open to be solved in a non-restrictive way.
With the fast forward features from Netflix, all I need to stop watching in one room and start in another is a Internet connected browser. How soon before I can play this on my PS3, XBox360, Wii, SlingCatcher, or what ever other device that has the right connection to a TV. For my living room I would want something like the new Apple TV with HDMI connector. For other rooms, maybe I'll try to find some cheap unit with RCA output.
If Netflix continues to expand the number of movies offered by VOD like they have with DVD then I look forward to my multitude of choices. For action movies and long playing TV series I will continue to get the DVDs in the mail. For romantic movies and cartoons that the wife wants to watch, the downloaded quality would be fine.
Netflix is going to have to pay for bandwidth. Nobody will sell netflix bandwidth at a loss for very long. If average costs for the consumer end go up because of higher average usage, they'll raise prices on the other end, or delay dropping prices for a while. It seems pretty simple to me.
The internet went through a similar adjustment when the text to graphic change occurred in the early 90s. People predicted these "huge" graphic files and animations were going to break the internet. Prices have only gone down. I used to pay $30/month for 9600 baud dialup. Now I pay $30/month for 1.5/384 dsl. I bet in 10 years we'll be measuring our internet bandwith in gigabits and it'll still be $30/month.
Just think about how much things have changed. The typical home internet user used to have a dumb terminal and would occasionally transfer files of a few kilobytes. Total monthly usage was maybe 1 megabyte for a fiend. We've already added several orders of magnitude to this. Why the problem with one or two more?
Man, you really need that seminar!
Do you work for a struggling broadband ISP? Using bandwidth that's already been paid for isn't "harming" anyone; it's more properly called "business". If ISPs have made bad deals, let them choke on their own shortsightedness.
BTW, I don't think caching and DRM are compatible.
I'd be fired at work if I told 10% of our customers to f*** off.
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
Why should they? Honestly, what would they benefit? If they can't make money off new infrastructure, why would they pour money into it?
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR