Netflix Hopes to Offer Services Via 360, PS3

Gamasutra is reporting on comments made by Netflix in a recent financials conference call. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stated that the company is looking to offer movie service via next gen consoles at some point. "[Said Hastings,] 'In terms of enabling the viewing of online content on the television screen, we are exploring a variety of options, including Internet connected, high definition DVD players, internet connected game consoles, and dedicated internet set tops, with a variety of partners, trying to understand the best ways to provide inexpensive viewing of online content on the television.' .. It is unclear, however, whether either Sony or Microsoft would allow such a service to become available on their consoles, as both Sony prepares and Microsoft already offers their own internet-connected video-on-demand services over their respective networks."

Comments

Holy crap!

[JK_the_Slacker]

You mean to tell me... I could watch movies... ON MY TV!

Why didn't somebody think of this before? It could spawn a whole new industry!

Re:Holy crap!

[Aladrin]

You could before, but now you'll be able to do it without a cable subscription and without getting off your ass, even just to check the mail.

If they offered an unlimited monthly service, at a very cheap rate ($15?), I'd go for it. If they also expanded to stream current TV eps, I'd drop my cable service totally and just pay them, even for as much as my cable service charges. You see, my cable provider doesn't let me pick when I want to watch it unless I remember to tell the machine to record the show (including shows I didn't know I wanted to watch) and that my power doesn't flicker in the middle of recording. Since I -never- randomly watch TV (no time), Netflix would provide all I want and more, and I'd pay them the same $60/mo instead.

What, no Wii?

[jimstapleton]

Honestly, that is probably the console that will get the greatest use out of that feature.

Re:What, no Wii?

[steveo777]

HD? Are they really steaming HD movies already? I only ask because I don't have enough bandwidth for that. Well, I might but I've never seen it actually work that well for a very long time. Gametrailser's HD content usually has to buffer to 90% or beyond to watch a whole preview. Could just be my crappy provider (Qwest, no fiber).

I'm sure the Wii could play MP4's in 480P pretty well if they wanted to let you. It'd be nice if I could view my photos and my videos off the digital camera. But, yeah, if they did have HD content available (and the bandwidth), no chance.

Mac?

[moosesocks]

Could they please open up their VoD service to us humble Mac users? There are quite a lot of us.

Re:Mac?

[macdude22]

They demo'd a silverlight based solution that ran on OS X (and Linux I think) some time ago, Silverlight has long since been released but alas no watch now upgrade. I've emailed them a couple times announcing my disappointment, as a Netflixer of going on 7 years they've gotten a lot of my money so they can spend some of it to support my Mac. Not something I'm going to cancel them over, as they are an incredible value to me, but I'll still be a grumbly fellow about it. I was really excited about the Silverlight solution as it looked to support just about everything, Mac, Windows, Linux, your amiga toaster.

It is better than competing services

[zpapasmurf]

Having used the netflix "watch it now" service as well as iTunes I can say that of the two, Netflix is superior. Having not used Amazon's service or movielink or anything like that I can't comment on them except to say that I would never use them.

With netflix, I pay 16.99 a month for 3 movies out at a time. On top of that I get 17 hours of online watching for free (As in, when I signed up I paid that amount for the DVDs and no instant viewing). What I like about the Netflix service is that A) It's fast... movies start within 15 seconds B) It scales well depending on your connection speed (up to DVD resolution video) and C) I "rent" the material, I do not pay to own it.

Recently, Netflix has also partnered with NBC and I know that for some shows (Heroes specifically) they will put the most recent episode on line 2 days after it airs without commercial in widescreen 720x480 resolution.

I have also heard that netflix are testing out plans for unlimited online viewing along with DVD rentals at their current prices for new customers. It seems like a win win to me.

Re:In other news...

[jollyreaper]

Milla Jovovich I can see. But Ms. Jolie has not aged well. See any non-touched up no-make up pictures of her and you wonder if thats still human. That's not age, my friend, that's bad plastic surgery.

http://www.popular-pics.com/pictures.aspx?photoid=104

http://www.superphotospace.com/images/thumb/ang_jolie_nj1_4497c80dccbf0-t.jpg

With her current rate of surgical progression, she will look like this in ten years.

http://michaelgenrich.com/blog/images/carville_batboy.jpg

Open up what you already have

[cerelib]

They should start by making their "Watch Instantly" video-on-demand system work on other operating systems and browsers. Right now it is "Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, running Internet Explorer version 6 or higher". I am not a fan of Flash, so I hate to say it, but at least start by switching to Flash instead of ActiveX (or whatever Windows tech they are using). I don't get it really. They will send me a DVD that I can (maybe not allowed, but still can) make copies of and re-encode to whatever format I want, but they won't send me the bits to play using any software I want.

TFA is misleading.

[WoTG]

This confused me also, I figured Wii is a no-brainer, even if it's not at the maximum resolution that Netflix is willing to stream. So, since I've been considering buying shares in Netflix, I decided to actually RTFA.

The author of the article on Gamasutra.com used PS3 and XBox as examples. The actual transcript of the conference call does not mention PS3 or Xbox, just this:

"In terms of enabling the viewing of online content on the television screen, we are exploring a variety of options, including Internet connected, high definition DVD players, Internet connected game consoles, and dedicated Internet set tops, with a variety of partners, trying to understand the best ways to provide inexpensive viewing of online content on the television."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/50856-netflix-q3-2007-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo

So... the millions of Wii's out there will probably have their chance at this too, IMHO.