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Netflix Now Offers Instant Online Movie Streaming

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the goodbye-video-store-you-won't-be-missed dept.

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.

5 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. wow.... by advocate_one · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  2. Re:Scratched? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  3. Re:Say goodbye to the Internet you knew by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  4. Good First Step! by bareman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  5. Re:Hold on now... by dave420 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.