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Netflix Extends "Watch Instantly" To Mac Users
CNet is reporting that Netflix has opened up its "Watch Instantly" feature to Mac users (here is Netflix's blog entry). They accomplished this by using Microsoft's Silverlight technology on both platforms, abandoning the Windows Media Player solution that had been employed in the first, Windows-only, version. Silverlight's DRM capabilities meet Netflix's needs, apparently. Netflix warns that this is beta software. Mac users can opt in here, then watch instantly with Safari or Firefox 2+, with the Silverlight plugin in place. Movie selection is somewhat limited.
This also theoretically opens the door to watching movies in Windows WITHOUT having to use IE. I never understood why IE was required to begin with since the current non-beta DRM was Windows Media-based.
It doesn't seem to differ from the normal instant watch selection. Obviously that selection is limited in that it does not encompass the entire Netflix library- that would be infeasible regardless of the player being used.
As far as I can tell, the beta allows access to the full instant watch selection that IE users would see. The player loads and buffers much quicker than the player in IE7- allowing for much faster skipping forwards and backwards on the old P-IV in my living room. The performance difference is fairly pronounced on my relatively new laptop. Under Firefox it is consistently 15 seconds from clicking "play" while browsing instant-watch to the actual start of the video. In IE7 it will take between 30 seconds 45 seconds. Video quality is indistinguishable in terms of clarity, but I noticed much less stuttering in the silverlight player.
On the old pentium IV machine in my livingroom, the time to play drops from about 1 minute to 25 seconds. While this is half the time, it was never a big deal when compared to the convenience. What is a big deal is the impressive drop in stuttering compared to the player in IE7. On my dinosaur of a living room computer, the video for all netflix movies would stutter every few seconds or so until the movie was fully buffered. In the silverlight player, there is no noticeable stuttering.
I did this totally subjective, non-scientific, arbitrary, and slightly drunk comparison on the following two machines:
Older-than-dirt desktop-
-2.4 GHz Pentium IV
-1GB DDR 333 RAM
-Windows XP Home SP3
-Ati Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB VRAM)
Slightly Newer Laptop-
-2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-Windows XP Pro SP3
-Ati Radeon Mobility x1400 (god awful)
Sadly, I titled the first post really poorly. After playing around with the "beta" player on a couple machines for a little while longer I found a few other things worth noting.
The Silverlight player does not require nearly as much free space as the IE7/WMP player for the "high quality" video to play. I've checked and the library is the same as that availible for the PC as far as the 182 items in my instant queue go.
While that doesn't cover the thousands upon thousands of items they stream, it does cover a wide range of properties. So far as I can tell, the Starz! content, the CBS current series content, the NBC current series content, and all the showtime content is still there. Other than that, well who cares if "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians" isn't availible in Firefox. Oh wait, it looks like it is.
It's opt-in. Go here: http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin
I don't think it is NetFlix's choice to adopt Silverlight. They released a press release to their Mac users before, stating that it is the movie companies (probably MPAA) stipulated which DRM they can use. But, true to their word, they finally are opening Watch Instantly to Mac users. Lets hope that the Linux port of Silverlight gets thrown in the mix too.
I know Microsoft products are unpopular, but sadly, the adage "No one ever got fired for buying (trusting) Microsoft" probably applies here.
Shake has always been available for Linux - in fact, it has been ported to MacOS/Windows from that OS. Shake 4 for Linux is sold for $4999 right now.
Besides, have you heard about Autodesk Smoke? That's a complete Linux-based online video editing suite.
Coding etudes
arrghh
There are video CODECs written in Smalltalk running on Squeak. I was at a presentation by Alan Kay a couple of years ago where he gave the entire presentation from within Squeak, including video. Squeak isn't a particularly fast implementation of Smalltalk - it's a bytecode interpreter with no JIT capabilities. A modern JavaScript environment should be faster.
The main reason JavaScript would be slow for writing a video CODEC is that it only has one kind of numerical object, a double-precision float. Implementations try to work around this, but it's not always possible.
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i'd prefer theora.
Cross platform compatibility should rank high. When apple laptop sales are over 40% on campuses and over 33% in the overall market, you are guaranteed that apple will be in your business. Linux is ALREADY in your business if you have sys admins or developers. Silverlight relies on Microsoft products that are not available to these platforms. Your mac will not be able to play alot of data that Slverlight uses. You are at the mercy of a company that is not releasing all their codecs, apis that Silverlight uses.
Flash on the otherhand is much more open.
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