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Netflix Extends "Watch Instantly" To Mac Users

Posted by kdawson on from the instant-grats dept.

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.

1 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. "Movie Selection is Limited"? by TiberSeptm · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)