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.

Comments

wow....

[advocate_one]

the tubes are really gonna get filled up now...

Scratched?

[lpcustom]

I wonder if the streaming videos will have virtual scratches that cause them to skip like the real netflix dvd's do......

Re:Scratched?

[Rob T Firefly]

They're way ahead of you. The state-of-the-art disc simulation subroutines will utilize something called "network lag" for much the same effect.

Re:Scratched?

[edwardpickman]

It's an upgrade like their home theater kit. The home theater kit comes with floor gunk, stale popcorn airfreshner and a fake head to put infront of you to give that special visual experience. It also comes with a CD of teen age girls talking and babies crying in case you don't have your own on hand.

Re:Scratched?

[Pollardito]

don't worry, there's a link to click to say you didn't receive that frame of the video and they'll send it again

Say goodbye to the Internet you knew

[Shaman]

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.

Re:Say goodbye to the Internet you knew

[Rob T Firefly]

Up until now, your typical 1337 torrent freak was pretty uncommon among the general public

Nonono, that's just what we want the **AA to think!

Actually, people were saying the same things about MMOs, and before that Usenet binaries, and before the integration of images into webpages. As long as people expect a certain level of service, the industry will grow to provide it, which in turn will make people expect a certain level of service. It's a cycle, you can never "top out" on infrastructure.

Re:Say goodbye to the Internet you knew

[gravesb]

As long as men can say "My pipe is bigger than yours," Internet bandwidth will never stop expanding.

Re:Say goodbye to the Internet you knew

[Rob T Firefly]

We are definitely *not* going to see a doubling of performance for switch fabric in the near future. We definitely *could* see a doubling of Internet traffic as a result of IPTV.

We weren't going to see a doubling of performance on the speed of a modem connected to POTS lines either, once that topped out. Instead of trying to break laws of physics with century-old copper wire, they replaced it with broadband.

Of course working on the backbone is much different than swapping your 56K modem for cable or fiber or what have you, and I'm not saying any of this will happen overnight, or even anytime soon. However, it is pretty much a guarantee that something will eventually come along to upgrade what's in use now. And if broadband video and/or other goodies the customers want choke out the current system, the providers will have to either set up something new, or lose their clientele to someone who does.

Remember AOL apologizing in their TV ads for service interruptions and busy signals during the Internet boom? Nobody in the industry wants to do that again, and they'll throw all the cash they can at avoiding it.

Re:Say goodbye to the Internet you knew

[LunaticTippy]

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?

weak feature

[Speare]

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.

Re:We already have it..

[Constantine XVI]

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)

Great to Evaluate Movies

[vwjeff]

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.

Internet Not Ready

[organgtool]

In all, the instant watching feature requires only Internet connectivity with a minimum of one megabit per second of bandwidth

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.

Good First Step!

[bareman]

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!

quality?

[wileyAU]

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.

Re:Hold on now...

[dave420]

S-Video cables are that difficult to use? Every computer I've owned in the past 5 years has had an S-Video TV-out on it. Every TV I've had has either a composite or S-Video in. You don't need Windows Media Centre or Front Row to watch movies on your TV. I just plug my crappy old notebook (with no battery, a broken lid catch, an external WiFi card and a slow hard disk) into either my small TV or projector. I can use the aforementioned S-Video, or even VGA, to do the job. Putting your computer's display through a TV is one of the easiest things you can do with a computer. And, the MPAA doesn't give a shit, as it's an auxilary monitor. It might have Macrovision on it, but you can still watch it perfectly. Just no recordy-recordy, that's all.

Does everyone wants a fugly PC in the living room?

[brokeninside]

I don't know of many people that want an ugly workstation permanently plugged into their TV or that are willing to plug their laptop in every time they want to stream a film. There is no real danger to the bricks and mortar rental places until TVs (or set top boxes) that can accept the streaming become ubiquitous. IMO, the killer appliance would be a DVR priced less than 500 USD with a DVD drive and a network interface capable of pulling movies from all the PCs in the house as well as services such as this.

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 ...

Dumb overreaching in first sentence

[dpbsmith]

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."

Re:We already have it..

[lpcustom]

...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.

This is the net-neutrality argument

[cfulmer]

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.

Good Next Step

[jswinth]

This is a good next step for Netflix. Here is a partial list of what they have done so far:

• Let the postman deliver and return the movies. This got around the shelf space limit of the physical video store.
• Introduce a monthly subscription that eliminated late fees. Procrastinators rejoice!
• Get many of the studios to press (or allow Netflix to press) special editions of movies that travel through the mail better.
• Compete with the new crop of VOD (video on demand) offerings by including it in the monthly fee (this might be an upgrade feature later).

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.

Re:windows only

[unDees]

I'd be fired at work if I told 10% of our customers to f*** off.

Re:*HOW* is the transfer implemented?

[AnyoneEB]

BTW, I don't think caching and DRM are compatible.

Sure they are. Company distributes video file encrypted with AES (or another block cipher) and keep the AES key secret. Anyone can download that file. The company has some DRM scheme such that an asymmetric key is generated such that the DRM utility on the customer's computer is only one with access to the private key. The user pays the company and then the company encrypts the key for the video file with the user's key and sends it off. This key may be stored in a key file or may just be put into the video file as metadata along with the title, etc. It doesn't matter because the key is only usable by that one user. (The decrypted key is never stored on the hard drive and is carefully protected when in memory.) As I understand it, this essentially is how MS's WMV (and WMA?) encryption currently works (in terms of process, not specific algorithms). You can look up details on the WMV protection, which is documented to some extent, but, as far as I know, not cracked.