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Netflix To Lift Streaming Limits
The AP has a story on Netflix's move to head off expected competition from Apple: the company will lift limits on streaming its movies for most subscribers. The story reports on rumors of an Apple movie-download service that may be announced by Steve Jobs on Tuesday. In the past Netflix has imposed limits on how long its subscribers could watch streamed movies; for example, those who paid $16.99/mo. could stream up to 17 hours per month. The limits will end on Monday for most subscribers (except for those paying $4.99 for two DVD rentals a month, said to be a small minority). The company has 6,000 movies available for streaming, compared to 90,000 that you can get delivered in the mail.
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Well gee, that makes the service pretty much useless to me unless I want to watch movies in a VM on my laptop, instead of on my TV. No thanks. I told them a year ago that if they didn't come up with viable solution Blockbuster or Apple would and that would probably be enough to make me switch. They replied back with a comment that it was impossible but that as soon as MS's silverlight technology was good enough they'd use that. Who in their right minds would bet the future of their company on a technology that is both completely controlled by Microsoft and in a market MS will probably want to compete in? I foresee the end of Netflix.
It's a shame that Netflix only supports Windows XP/Vista for streaming. I'd love to have a Mac OS X or Linux client.
Of course, I consider the mailed DVDs worth the subscription price, so Netflix doesn't have much incentive to make clients for people like me. I wonder if they would get many more subscribers if they offered a Mac client.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I realize you're kidding, but if Apple cared about its customers they would just license the WM DRM codecs and allow access on Macs.
It makes 0 sense to pay for a second DRM codec for a user base which is only 7% or so of the total. I don't like it either, but they can't just hand out free copies of every movie no strings attached, people who want that can already go with torrents.
Apple has chosen not to license any of the DRM types available to the rest of the mainstream computing world, it's unfortunate that the Mac users are ultimately the ones that lose out. 7% isn't really a that much leverage, especially since the majority of the account holders don't use the download service at all.
Id love to see a Linux client for this service. Especially if it could be built into a MythTV box (and there selection was a bit better). It would be awesome to have a large selection of movies that i could watch without even putting down the remote.
Netflix streaming won't work on macs (or linux). It also requires you to watch from a computer. Most cheap PC computers--that is to say most computers--are not fit company for the living room. The idea of the media PC has always made me laugh. Too noisey. (in contrast all but the powermacs which sound like windtunnels, are very quiet and welcome in the living room). SO it's ironic that the computers that netflix is suited for are the ones it does not support.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.