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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.
the tubes are really gonna get filled up now...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I wonder if the streaming videos will have virtual scratches that cause them to skip like the real netflix dvd's do......
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
This is the kind of thing that is going to strain the Internet's fabric at the seams. Up until now, your typical 1337 torrent freak was pretty uncommon among the general public, so the Internet has coped for the most part. But when the general public starts downloading several gigabytes of video every night, the whole equation will change.
I strongly suspect you will see bit capacities on all ISPs very shortly if they don't have them already. I know Sympatico in Canada was "unlimited" right up until last month when all their DSL circuits went to 5Mbps, and they claimed they would grandfather existing customers with unlimited service - which they turned on within the month.
So... I don't know whether this is a positive or a negative change, but I'm guessing for a lot of peering points and a lot of overloaded switch fabrics, this is a deal breaker.
...Steve
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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I read an article in the paper this morning claiming that this will be available for windows only. How disappointing.
-mkb
A) You can't put a full 2hr movie on YouTube without breaking it into 20 chunks, which is a HUGE hassle
B) YouTube looks like crap on my 15in laptop. What about your 42in 1080p HDTV?
C) Put YouTube on your TV without a device more advanced than a DVD player
Not that this doesn't have it's own problems:
A) Ridiculous bandwith requirements for the common person
B) Can't put it on your TV easily (again)
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
From Netflix:
System Requirements:
Windows XP with Service Pack 2
or Windows Vista
Internet Explorer version 6
or higher
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.
B) Can't put it on your TV easily (again)
A couple of years ago there was much talk about Netflix partnering with TiVo -- but I haven't read anything about it recently. Anyone know what happened to that?
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
ONLY one megabit per second of bandwidth? I live in a well populated area and my ONLY option is 768Kbps DSL or a 6Mbps cable connection that is saturated with other users in the neighborhood. Verizon's FIOS is still a few years away from being installed in my neighborhood, so this service is useless to me.
Hopefully this service will get people to see the benefit of higher speed connections and spark a bigger demand for more speed.
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.Pshaw... YouTube is the Wal-Mart of video. Tons of garbage nobody wants to watch, a couple of actual gems worth finding, and everything is encoded in Flash, the worlds most efficient, yet hardest to bear watching, video technology.
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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Also, as I mentioned in a different post, there is the closed captioning issue. I suspect, but I'm not positive, that Netflick's player app is not CC aware. Heck, Apple's Quicktime isn't going to be CC aware until the next release.
And then there is the issue of being able to stuff a physical disk into your bag and take it to work, school, a friend's house ...
I think virtually all rhetoric about device B being a "device-A-killer," or one technology quickly displacing other, is dumb... and in many cases is promotion by supporters of the new device or technology, hoping to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In 2000, when dedicated eBook devices were introduced, one could have imagined people saying "If you're the owner of a bookstore, it may be time to start thinking about getting into a different business."
In 1950, and early adopters were inviting their friends to come over and watch Milton Berle, one could have imagined people saying "If you're the owner of a movie theatre, it may be time to start thinking about getting into a different business."
All businessmen need to be watching their back, and video rental store owners are well advised to be vigilant... the times, they certainly are a' changin'. Going out to the movies and buying overpriced boxes of Nonpareils is a different product and a different experience from watching "The Wizard of Oz" on a television set. The latter model may ultimately displace the former, but it's not at all obvious just how it will happen or at what speed or when
Similarly, downloading a movie and watching it on your PC is going to feel very different from renting a DVD. And speaking of Milton Berle on a 5" diameter round Dumont picture tube... a) who wants to watch movies "on their PCs?" b) Do you have your PC in the living room connected to a big screen? Does anybody you know? Yesyesyes I know all about the technology and Steve Job's "Apple TV" and "convergence," the big buzzword since 1990. I just don't see it actually happening yet. All these companies are selling a solution to something my son-in-law doesn't see as a big problem.
If Netflix would let you burn that movie to a DVD and carry it over to the big-screen TV set that a lot of people I know do have, then, yes, the video stores should worry a bit more. But at the moment the movie industry seems to be adamantly opposed to concepts like "permanent" and "own" and "bought it."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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!
358MB file / 42m41s = 139.9 kiloBYTES per second. 139.9 * 8 = 1.1 megaBITS per second. Plus, this is an average bitrate. MPEG video is often encoded at a variable bitrate, so some parts may have a higher bitrate than others. There is also going to be protocol overhead that adds to these numbers -- those IP and TCP or UDP headers take up bandwidth too. Therefore, one would have to assume that Netflix will be encoding at a lower bitrate than what you're used to. Probably at least 25% less. I would expect video quality equivalent to YouTube or perhaps marginally better.
Score: 1, What-do-you-expect?
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.
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.
If the movies are transferred to the user via a good old fashioned protocol like http or ftp, then that means ISPs can cache it. 10000 Comcast users buy the movie, and those gigabytes get transferred from Netflix to Comcast once, and then 10000 times from Comcast's hard drive to the users (assuming those users aren't sharing any "more local" caches).
If they are using some stupid streaming protocol, then it gets transferred once for each sale. That is really, really stupid. It doesn't just harm Comcast (who, let's face it, is going to pass the cost on to their customers) but it also costs Netflix (oh wait, they will just pass the cost on, too). It also costs everyone in between, pisses off ISPs since they don't like to pass extra costs to the customers ("if we're going to charge customers more, then that extra charge should go into our pocket, dammit!") and that means we get more lobbyist in Washington to get rid of "net neutrality" which not only sucks, but will probably have numerous other distasteful riders attached.
That means it is you guys -- the customers -- who need to make sure this is done right. If Netflix's approach doesn't work with caches (e.g. Squid) then BOYCOTT IT. Anything that is a technological step backwards from the web, is a disgrace.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.