Nintendo Wii To Get Netflix Streaming

motang writes "Netflix and Nintendo is set to announce Netflix streaming service for the Wii soon. Subscribers who have the unlimited streaming service can watch non-HD version of the movies on their Wii with a special Netflix disc inserted." The thing I can't understand is why the PS3 and Wii have to require a disc. Both are capable of downloading applications and executing them. Why should I be required to dedicate my disc slot to stream a movie? Of course, my netflix queue is half-filled with Ken Burns documentaries, so if I lost the disc, I think that would just make the wife happier.

Comments

The disc is DRM

[BadAnalogyGuy]

By requiring you to have the disc, they make it difficult for most people to use the system without proper authorization.

Will it hinder most Slashbots? No. But it isn't meant to stop hardcore copyright infringers. It's meant to stop the average guy from sharing his copy of Netflix with everyone in the neighborhood.

Re:The disc is DRM

[LWATCDR]

No..
NetFlix uses a password. You could give that to everybody and there dog and they could use NetFlix on their PC.
The Wii has limited space for applications it could be that the streaming is too big to store on the Wii.
The real reason I think is that Microsoft got an "exclusive" on putting Netflix "on" a game console.

Re:The disc is DRM

[yincrash]

This doesn't make any sense. Please elaborate further. All devices report to netflix and are linked via one time use account codes to keep track of how many devices are in use under an account. Also, the XBL version of netflix is not on disc.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they are planning to get rid of the disc requirement later this year. I suspect it was due to some kind of exclusivity deal with Microsoft, but who knows.

Re:The disc is DRM

[LordKronos]

You could give that to everybody and there dog and they could use NetFlix on their PC.

Only if "everybody and there [sic] dog" amounts to no more than 6, because that's how many devices netflix only lets you register.

Re:The disc is DRM

[goombah99]

THe problem I have with netflix streaming is that on Silverlight it's buffer is so shallow that on my crappy evening comcast connection the movie frequently chatters and stops to rebuffer and degrade resolution.

I asked comcast why they don't have a large buffer mode. I'd be happy to wait 20 minutes for a movie to start if I could get fluid high res playback. It's far more frustrating to watch for 20 minutes and then have to abandon a movie as unwatchable with all the interruptions.

Netflix told me this has to do with some agreement with the studios on what they can deliver, and also in part do yo what silverlight is able to do.

I've been wondering if Roku or now Boxee might have different buffer rules or if it sucks on Silverlight it will suck on Roku too.

Perhaps if they have some new DRM on a closed hardware system they might get concessions that would allow movies to be pre-downloaded at high res. I'd be pretty happy about that.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

fail. learn before you post.

Re:The disc is DRM

[sexconker]

The real reason I think is that Microsoft got an "exclusive" on putting Netflix "on" a game console.

This is 100% correct.
Netflix has even stated so.
There will be a downloadable application (no disc needed) for the PS3 sometime this year.

Re:The disc is DRM

[mcb]

I use Netflix streaming from my PS3, my Windows PC and my Macbook without any real difficulties. I will admit I only watch the content they offer in HD, the normal stuff looks so bad that I would rather acquire it... another way... than stream it from Netflix.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked comcast why they don't have a large buffer mode. I'd be happy to wait 20 minutes for a movie to start if I could get fluid high res playback. It's far more frustrating to watch for 20 minutes and then have to abandon a movie as unwatchable with all the interruptions.

That's funny! You expect Comcast to go out of their way to make your non-Comcast-supplied video viewing experience better?

Re:The disc is DRM

[Saint Gerbil]

Err OK Silverlight is on version 3 so by your arbitrary method doesn't suck.
It has a poor take up rate but does a lot more than flash can do but is generally considered harder to work with.

Windows Media Player stolen from Apple! Blimey something build for a different platform and even different processor architecture and running a different proprietary file format is quite a steal.

Re:The disc is DRM

[jitterman]

I've been a NetFlix subscriber since about 2001. I can verify that the streaming service was good prior to Silverlight, then sucked it hard for several months as they converted to the new tech, but (at least on Win7) it's been fine for quite a while now.

Every new multimedia technology Microsoft creates sucks until the second major revision (at least).

While I don't think that's an untrue statement in general, it applies to many technologies, both hardware and software. As for hardware, that goes for many things outside the computer industry (car models, washing machines, whatever have you) as real-world use reveals shortcomings the original design and testing didn't take into account.

Re:The disc is DRM

[saberworks]

It will suck on Roku, too, if you have a crappy/inconsistent connection. If it ever drops below a certain threshold, it will just degrade the quality to the next lowest stream it thinks it can support. Roku is worse than xbox/ps3 in that it seems to remember the resolution you usually stream at so even when the connection gets better (other times of the day, for example), it takes it a while to realize it and start getting the higher quality streams.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Max(10)]

But... on the internet, everybody is a dog. Besides, their streaming service is so shitty on the PC that many subscribers of the service still pirate online just because it's easier than trying to convince Silverlight to work.

And that's the real reason for the disc requirement - piracy. If you take a closer look at the disc you'll notice that it has a jagged edge, but an average person wouldn't normally notice the difference when handling the disc. Now imagine someone reporting you for pirating movies and your little disc spinning at 25,000 rpm then being shot out at 200 mph.. DRM now stands for Decapitation & Radical Maiming.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Tetsujin]

But... on the internet, everybody is a dog. Besides, their streaming service is so shitty on the PC that many subscribers of the service still pirate online just because it's easier than trying to convince Silverlight to work.

And that's the real reason for the disc requirement - piracy. If you take a closer look at the disc you'll notice that it has a jagged edge, but an average person wouldn't normally notice the difference when handling the disc. Now imagine someone reporting you for pirating movies and your little disc spinning at 25,000 rpm then being shot out at 200 mph.. DRM now stands for Decapitation & Radical Maiming.

Or... Digital Rights Murder...

Re:The disc is DRM

[lupine]

I used to have DSL through TDS until I started having problems with nexflix buffering. The movie would play fine for 1 hour and then start to have buffering issues.
I did some network speed tests using dslreports and a local speedtest server. If I was just doing normal web browsing and then did a speed test I would get a decent speed, plenty good for netflix streaming. Then I tried watching a movie, one hour into it buffering started, I shut down the movie and immediately ran a speed test and found that my bandwidth had been cut exactly in half.

I repeated this test a number of times and then switched to cable internet and told TDS to get fucked - they wanted me to switch to a more expensive plan but did not admit to throttling my connection. Now I have higher speed cable(charter) and haven't noticed any throttling or had any trouble with netflix playback(HD).

Re:The disc is DRM

[kcitren]

Just stop the show and resume where you left off, it seems recalibrate the network speed every time you start a show.

Re:The disc is DRM

[mweather]

I've never registered even a single device. Is this a recent change? I have had my subscription on hold for a few months.

Re:The disc is DRM

[tomhudson]

No, it's because when you put a disk in the Wii, you're not just loading the game - you're loading a copy of the OS and the game. The updates to your Wii are a separate supervisor program. That's why you can't "patch" disk-based Wii games. Otherwise, you could have the OS load the game, then grab patches off your SD card slot or the net, or let the console supervisor patch it.

Re:The disc is DRM

[girlintraining]

Now imagine someone reporting you for pirating movies and your little disc spinning at 25,000 rpm then being shot out at 200 mph.. DRM now stands for Decapitation & Radical Maiming.

Apple perfected this technology with their floppy disk drives with the Mac Classic. It's not new. But there's no way to remotely retension the spring...

Re:The disc is DRM

[omnichad]

Computers don't count as a "device" for the sake of this discussion.

Re:The disc is DRM

[geminidomino]

Or... Digital Rights Murder...

Can you say that again, but in James Roday's voice?

Re:The disc is DRM

[Callandor]

Computers count as a device when it comes to a six-device limit. From Netflix's FAQ:

"Please keep in mind that your account can have up to six unique authorized devices activated (associated with the account) at any given time, including personal computers and Netflix ready devices."

Registration is automatic; odds are good that most people aren't even aware that this is (and has been) happening. Interestingly, as best as I can tell, Netflix's license agreement does not prohibit your sharing your password with friends. However, you are limited to six devices, including computers, and up to four simultaneous streams, depending upon your plan.

As for whether the disc is DRM, it seems unlikely. Who needs a physical key when you have an account and a device ID that is stored on the server?

Re:The disc is DRM

[rootofevil]

i googled it just to make sure, and you sir win a cookie for the day.

Re:The disc is DRM

[omnichad]

Hope they let me reset that. Preferably on a per-device basis. I use whatever computer I'm in front of.

Re:The disc is DRM

[LBt1st]

So we just have to wait for their agreement period to end and we should get a sane version on Wii as well :)

Re:The disc is DRM

[Callandor]

"Your Account & Help" -> "Manage Netflix ready devices and computers" will give you a list of registered devices and provide you with a link to deactivate them. I've never deactivated a device, so I don't know how the process works, but it looks like you should be able to deactivate devices in order to free up slots to register others.

Re:The disc is DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Netflix streaming from my PS3, my Windows PC and my Macbook without any real difficulties. I will admit I only watch the content they offer in HD, the normal stuff looks so bad that I would rather acquire it... another way... than stream it from Netflix.

From everything I've ever seen or read on the subject, you can't stream HD from Netflix on a computer. Have you found a way to circumvent this on your Macbook or, as I suspect, is the SD quality not as bad as you claim?

Re:The disc is DRM

[IndustrialComplex]

Just stop the show and resume where you left off, it seems recalibrate the network speed every time you start a show.

That isn't really a solution to his problem. He wants high-quality, uninterrupted playback. Having a show suddenly stop and stutter because the bandwidth gets thin partway through playyback won't be fixed by stopping the show and hoping it selects a faster network speed. His issue is that the buffers are too small to allow playback at a high resolution on a slow connection.

Unless the buffer issue is fixed, he will run into the same problem even if he resumes playback. (and it is annoying stopping and starting playback)

Re:The disc is DRM

[StreetStealth]

we should get a sane version on Wii as well

Yes, putting discs in drives is madness!

Re:The disc is DRM

[DarKnyht]

People forget that originally the Wii was only supposed to have an SD Card slot, the "Menu" was actually a disc that shipped with the system. So alot of the features that everyone complains about not having is partially due to things being tacked on near the end of development.

Nintendo didn't foresee the demand for WiiWare, Virtual Console, and other "channels" at first, or a least was going to handle it differently.

Re:The disc is DRM

[lena_10326]

Also, every Wii has a unique ID in firmware, so they can already track users with Netflix account ID and Wii console ID. The Neflix DRM scheme could validate both IDs against Netflix and Nintendo, so using unique IDs in the DVD doesn't buy anything. It's possible hard drive space is an issue, but I suspect it's more likely due to the Wii's boot procedure. Since the Wii is so underpowered, it probably requires loading drivers in kernel space in order to decode streaming video faster. Loading kernel drivers from the Wii channel or an SD card wouldn't be possible because they are restricted in what they can load, so that leaves Netflix with booting a signed app from the DVD. Of course, this is all guesswork and can't be confirmed until the Netflix DVD is available for analysis.

Re:The disc is DRM

[bluefoxlucid]

Since the Wii is so underpowered, it probably requires loading drivers in kernel space in order to decode streaming video faster.

The CPU is not magically faster in kernel mode! You must be a girl, or a suit, because you're clueless about computers. Exceptions made for a girl in a suit.

Re:The disc is DRM

[bluefoxlucid]

[Citation needed]

Re:The disc is DRM

[lena_10326]

The CPU is not magically faster in kernel mode! You must be a girl, or a suit, because you're clueless about computers

Kernel thread context switching versus user space thread context switching. Spin locks versus mutex locks. Functional overhead of user space library calls. Zero copy buffers. Kernel tuning of buffer sizes, descriptors, threading, scheduler algorithm, networking, memory map, memory allocation. Direct access of the graphics chipset and other co-processors in ways not permitted by library APIs.

Maybe you should take a college level course in operating systems design sometime...

Re:The disc is DRM

[KDR_11k]

Does the Wii even have much of an OS?

Re:The disc is DRM

[TheDownSyndromeKid]

Is that what they made those coffee holders for? Huh....

Re:The disc is DRM

[lena_10326]

It seems the system OS is minimal, runs off the ARM CPU on the GPU, and controls access to the Wii hardware not present in the Gamecube architecture (such as the Wii controller). The system OS and firmware on the DVD drive guard against loading arbitrary software off the DVD disk, so any Wii mode executable would have to be blessed and recognized as legitimate by the system OS. Any OS running on the PowerPC gets loaded off the DVD. Now, this part is me guessing but either the PowerPC OS is packaged as a separately distinct executable(s) or it would be statically linked in with the game executable. I don't know because I'm not a Wii developer who builds Wii games. If Netflix needed back-door access to the hardware, it would probably have to negotiate that somehow with the system OS on the ARM CPU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_system_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_homebrew

If all my assumptions are false, and Wii software coming from the DVD or SD Card (thus Wii Shop) naturally has full access to hardware, then I don't know why the Netflix app would require loading off a DVD. Privileged execution or hardware access is the only valid technical reason I can think of.

Re:The disc is DRM

[godrik]

Yes, putting discs in drives is madness!

No! It is SPARTA!

Re:The disc is DRM

[adolf]

If the bandwidth available is insufficient for the task, then no amount of additional buffering will help. Bigger buffers will reduce the frequency at which the buffer empties, but will also simply take more time to fill back up. The ratio of "Buffering..." to movie watching is more-or-less constant, for a given bit of media on a given connection.

Re:The disc is DRM

[0x000000]

Licensing agreements with Microsoft about the Xbox being the only console with access to NetFlix on the device itself is not valid?

Re:The disc is DRM

[jseale]

I don't see how that'd work for the college guy who wants to watch stuff on the 'puter in his dorm and then ship off to his/her folks house and watch that stuff there. I know the holidays are over but this kinda' issue would most definitely come up then.

Re:The disc is DRM

[bluefoxlucid]

Spin locks are flawed, hence the recent effort to replace them entirely with semaphores. User space library calls are equivalent to kernel space library calls (i.e. a call insn without a context switch). Zero copy buffers... is a valid argument, but arguable depending on kernel APIs and internals. Kernel tuning of whatever to a task is invalid for buffer sizes, and complex otherwise (specially tuning the scheduler?! That's a major operation). On Linux at least, X11 has had direct access to video memory since eternity, and I daresay direct PIO and MMIO to video chipset registers since God knows when.

Theoretical operating system design concepts are great, and most modern operating systems have glaring flaws. That said, most modern operating systems make theoretical operating system design classes look like medieval discussions on how to build a catapult... while you're busy cleaning your repeating rifle. It's not that the designers haven't made horrible errors that studying up a bit would make obvious; it's that the designers have also discovered errors in the theory, and based plenty enough of the design on new concepts that the system looks like black magic and future-ware.

While we're talking ARM, did you know L4 has an implementation with a few-microsecond context switch each way on ARM? L4 Wombat ARM bare context switch latency is on the order of microseconds; Linux context switching on the same ARM testing platform was on the order of hundreds of microseconds. The strange thing was the research effort that went into this was running tests on Linux, every time; L4 Wombat ARM is Linux ARM paravirtualized on L4 Pistachio. Some data here.

Granted there were some iffy issues like syscalls (major here) and fork() calls; but the bulk of effort is going to be a lot of work done to process (decompress) video, and shipping the decompressed data to the video processor. Likely the latter will be done with MMIO or PIO on a privilege mask; I understand these both exist on x86, I'm not sure about the ARM architecture though. Particularly, MMIO is a function of the MMU, and I believe ARM MMU specifics are variable (i.e. the MMU is a separate thing). These features would mitigate any concerns about shipping data from user space to the graphics chipset; but they may simply not exist on this architecture.

Re:The disc is DRM

[IndustrialComplex]

If the bandwidth available is insufficient for the task, then no amount of additional buffering will help. Bigger buffers will reduce the frequency at which the buffer empties, but will also simply take more time to fill back up. The ratio of "Buffering..." to movie watching is more-or-less constant, for a given bit of media on a given connection.

Your first statement is incorrect. If the buffer is the size of the total, if you let the buffer fill then you will have no problems even if you receive at 1 kbps.

Your buffer is filling at a rate D and your buffer is emptying at a rate P, If you want playback to be uninterrupted you need to determine how much initial buffer you need so that by the conclusion of the video your buffer is empty. It's a very simple problem to solve.

The solution only fails when rate D is inconstant and decreases at some time between t(o) and t(f). (so that the average rate is something D ) However, it can be solved by selecting a buffer size that is larger and allowing it to fill to a sufficient level prior to commencing playback.

Filling the buffer in the first place may take longer, but that's the point. Allowing a person with a poor connection to use a larger buffer and fill it prior to starting playback will solve the problem.

Re:The disc is DRM

[adolf]

My first statement was tempered by the notion that the reader would understand the context of the matter at hand. I'm not writing a thesis here, but just brief commentary on a Web forum.

In this context of Netflix streaming media, which promises "Instant Play," long buffering (which obviously may include the entire volume of the media) is not acceptable at all.

It is, instead, up to the user to ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available for the streaming content. (The emphasis there is to accentuate the idea of "steaming," instead of "download and then play whenever it gets done.")

With modern broadband connections (and again, I take certain liberties with this term, which I expect to be understood by all with a grasp of the context except for perhaps the most pedantic folk such as yourself), excessive buffering probably means that the user is doing too many other things with their connection (Bittorrent, for instance) at the same time, or that their ISP is actively fighting the usage.

If you wish to make a contextually-meaningful reply, I'll gleefully entertain it. But what you've written so far is without merit, AGAIN, simply on the basis that you've neglected to include the context of the application in your thought-process.

Poor

[Cornwallis]

wife.

Re:Poor

[corbettw]

He popped the question to her on Slashdot; she knew what she was getting into.

Re:Poor

[vegiVamp]

Instead of giving you some form of moderation for your attempt at +1 Funny, I'm posting this comment, just because you're one of those annoying gits who starts their comment in the subject.

Re:Poor

[AmberBlackCat]

On behalf of everybody who has ever been a wife, I'd say putting a disc into a computer is not too much to ask. I do it every time I play a DVD. What I don't understand is, if they're offering a downloadable version for the PS3 later, why aren't they offering a downloadable version for the Wii. And even if it's really low resolution, why not a downloadable version for the DSi?

Microsoft

[absurdhero]

Microsoft may have an exclusive deal with Netflix to have built-in Netflix support. Simply giving DVDs out with software for the other platforms *without* the possibility to install it may get around this agreement.

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand the netflix streaming API is silverlight. So Microsoft easily implemented this on X-Box. However, ps3 is using the blu-ray live feature to access Netflix and I have no idea what nintendo will use.

I'm assuming Netflix is in the process of overhauling it's streaming system to cooperate with ps3 and wii. Since ps3 is slated as having a software version in the near to distant future (possibly with the implementation of a paid for premium version of the Playstation Network).

However, besides the impending ps3 version...all of this is just assumption.

Re:Microsoft

[OrangeTide]

That doesn't account for Tivo, Boxee or Roku, which can stream it out of the box.

Re:Microsoft

[Moryath]

I don't know about the PS3, but I know technical limitations for memory on the Wii pretty much make this crap anyways.

The Wii can "download" apps, but its internal (flash) memory is incredibly small. Their "run from the SD slot" is a kludge that doesn't actually run the app from the SD slot, it copies it into part of the internal (flash) memory first.

I'm willing to bet the Netflix app is simply too big to fit inside the flash reliably.

Re:Microsoft

[CrankyFool]

Exclusive for game consoles, I suspect.

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft may have an exclusive deal with Netflix to have built-in Netflix support. Simply giving DVDs out with software for the other platforms *without* the possibility to install it may get around this agreement.

This is exactly correct. However, at some point soon, I believe as early as mid year, that contract expired, and then PS3 will be able to download the app (and I would assume Wii as well). Until the contract expires, users are stuck with this work around.

Re:Microsoft

[NeutronCowboy]

Spot-on. I don't have the link ready, but Microsoft had an exclusive deal with Netflix for an embedded player. Something like one year or so. Of course, a disk isn't embedded, and therefore, not subject to exclusivity agreement.

What I'm wondering is the take-up and pay-out numbers. Is it really that much of a pain in the ass - and therefore take-up hurdle - that it significantly impacts utilization? Or did Microsoft just completely overpay for a very limited exclusivity, that really isn't?

Re:Microsoft

[sexconker]

I'm willing to bet the Netflix app is simply too big to fit inside the flash reliably.

Seems to me Netflix on my PC didn't require a hefty download. You could easily get a Netflix-only app on the Wii.

Nintendo already has a "Nintendo channel" where they showcase new games (including streaming video). They already have a TV-type channel in Japan where they show and discuss soap operas or something.

The Wii is pretty weak, sure, but it sure as fuck can stream video and access the net.

Re:Microsoft

[Moryath]

After they introduced the "run from SD Card" kludge, it actually has less memory to work with. Ever completely filled your Wii's internal flash and then tried to run something from SD? You get problems like this. Essentially, in order to manage the "run from SD" area they make you keep your Wii's internal memory open.

Worse, this copy situation copies-then-deletes every time you use the "run from SD" function. Since it can't actually run the program from SD and copies it to internal flash instead, your internal flash gets worn on at an accelerated rate. If you download 5 games on your internal and played each once a day, you wrote to your flash precisely once for each game you downloaded. If you download them to SD instead and then "run" at the same rate, you're burning your flash 5+ times per day. We're going to see Wii's with bad internal flash start to pop up in a couple years because Nintendo couldn't make a sane architecture that was actually able to access its own external storage properly.

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not that they may, they do Netflix has announced this publicly and stated this year they will be adding it to the PS3 XMB when the deal with MS expires.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/26/netflix-ps3-disc-must-remain-in-system-until-2010-update/

Here is the article from joystiq.

Re:Microsoft

[Syberz]

The memory issue worries me as well, much memory can streaming a non-hd movie take? Also, my internets here are pretty limited in terms of bandwith so how much juice would downloading/streaming one movie per day take?

I currently get my dvd's in the mail so I'm curious if the move to digital media would be worthwhile.

Re:Microsoft

[Moryath]

To cache a decent portion, you'd be surprised. And it's the caching that would need to be important. Another reason they're loading the app from disc, rather than eating up space for a program that has to be copied into the Wii's internal flash...

Re:Microsoft

[netsavior]

youtube (used to or maybe still does) work from Wii with Opera, however their flash version is hella old and flash video is limited to about 30 minutes at a time before it exits semi-gracefully. I have used an excellent piece of software that might have also had a trojan (my poor windows virtual box died shortly after I discovered this awesome software). It was called PlayOn, ran a service on your windows box, streamed netflix to the server box, then re-streamed it to the Wii in flash 6 or whatever. Worked fine, but often crashed after 30 minutes due to Wii memory... Fortunately Netflix holds your place, so all you had to do was restart the browser and it auto-resumed at the right place.

It seems if this is the only problem, the Disc is probably just a simple video streaming client with actual garbage collection, to compensate for the tiny memory footprint of a Wii.

Re:Microsoft

[Nursie]

Just FYI - there's an iPlayer channel here in the UK too, so it's certainly capable of streaming video. Didn't seem as nice as using the PS3 somehow though.

Re:Microsoft

[Toonol]

I'm willing to bet the Netflix app is simply too big to fit inside the flash reliably.

Nah, I doubt that's a problem. The Opera web browser fits comfortably inside flash memory, and that includes flash; unless they're incompetent, a dedicated media player should be much smaller.

The problem with the Wii is probably just the limited ram to buffer the streaming video itself; it might be more dependent on a smooth and fast connection than the other two console. On the other hand, it's not streaming HD video, so that might not be as much of a problem. Either way, it's better to have the option than not have it.

Re:Microsoft

[Toonol]

If you download 5 games on your internal and played each once a day, you wrote to your flash precisely once for each game you downloaded. If you download them to SD instead and then "run" at the same rate, you're burning your flash 5+ times per day.

So, under the worst case scenario, you write a byte 5 times a day, on a flash drive that has a tolerance of 100,000+ writes? That reduces the expected lifetime to 20,000 days, or 54 years.. Not a problem. Flash drive read tolerances are high enough that writing a few times a day will not be a problem; they'll probably last longer than a hard drive under that kind of use. Write endurance of flash drives is high enough that it's only a problem for a normal user if they use it as a cache or ramdrive and it ends up with hundreds or thousands of writes a day.

Re:Microsoft

[Toonol]

Figure at nice but SDTV quality, with decent compression (and I think Silverlight uses pretty good compression), a two-hour movie takes around a gig. The Wii has 88mb of memory, so if the player is fairly light, they might be able to have about a 32mb buffer, which is only about 3-4 minutes.

If the quality is closer to youtube-level, instead of DVD-level, a two hour movie might be compressed down to a few hundred megs, and they could probably hold many times that amount. You're not going to be able to come close to buffering a whole movie, unless they let you save it on an external SD card.

Re:Microsoft

[lewiscr]

We're going to see Wii's with bad internal flash start to pop up in a couple years

No you're not. If you did this 100 times a day, MTBF would be 1000 days, or ~3 years. If you do this 5 times a day, MTBF will be 20x that, ~60 years. And those calculations are using the old and outdated 100,000 write cycles MTBF numbers. Newer flash is way better than that.

Re:Microsoft

[sexconker]

The "run from SD" thing does NOT reduce the available storage space. The Wii has 512 MB of internal flash storage. The option does NOT reserve space for itself. This is WHY you can run into situations like the one in your link. You have 512 MB of internal storage. You had 512 MB of internal storage before the SD option was put in, and you have 512 MB of internal storage after the SD option was put in.

It simply means you have to have enough space free if you want to "run from SD" (background swap).

The Wii Netflix channel could EASILY fit in the Wii's regular memory, leaving plenty of room for saves, WiiShop games, Virtual Console games, and other channels. It would only be a few megs (out of 512).

People who buy a ton of games had to "clean the fridge" and delete stuff in order to be able to download new stuff they bought (or old stuff they previously deleted and wanted to play again).

The "run from SD" option ONLY exists to allow people to move stuff to SD instead of having to delete and redownload. Yes, you need free space available temporarily. But if you're USING this option, then you're keeping everything except your few most-used channels on the SD card anyway.

I've got a ton of crap on my SD card, and a few in the Wii's internal memory. If I want to run something from the SD card, I do it. It works well. There's a delay when loading it into the internal storage, sure, but it's better than deleting, redownloading, and keeping track.

Flash writes are NOT an issue here, dude. The internal memory of the Wii will last until you're too arthritic to grip a Wiimote anyway.

Re:Microsoft

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I suspect no exclusivity at all. Xbox needs an app to run Netflix, so it's not a feature "out of the box". Also considering the number of other platforms that support Netflix. I'm guessing there is a technical reason for needing the disc...

Re:Microsoft

[DeKO]

Nonsense. Wii's flash memory is 512 MB, not 512 KB. It's unthinkable for a video player to be larger than, say, 50 MB; and at that mark it would still fit.

Re:Microsoft

[Syberz]

Ah, thanks for the info!

Well, then this confirms that this service would cost me a fortune if I'm planning on watching one movie a day (which is what my gf home on sick leave does). In Quebec, "decent" high speed internet comes with a cap of 30gigs up/down on which a 50$ fee is added if that cap is busted. That's on top of the roughly 60$/month it costs me now. So unless I stop using my internet exept for streaming movies then I'd have to upgrade my service to the 90$/month version.

I'll stick with movies in the mail, thanks.

Re:Microsoft

[markdavis]

>Microsoft may have an exclusive deal with Netflix to have built-in Netflix support

Nonsense. The TiVo has had Netflix built-in streaming for a long while now. Unless you meant an exclusive deal on GAMING CONSOLES only. But I can't imagine how that could possibly be in Netflix's best interest.

Re:Microsoft

[BillX]

Whaa...? The Wii has 88MB of total RAM (not including texture memory, ~3MB) in which to store and execute code+data. In fact, the Homebrew Channel (the Wii equivalent of Iphone jailbreak) listens on port 4299 for .dol/.elf binaries and executes them directly from RAM when received (great for developers). There is no need to write anything to Flash before executing.

No guarantees that the Big N 'officially' lets arbitrary developers/licensees full access to the RAM, but this capability is supported by the hardware and is being used successfully.

Re:Microsoft

[McKing]

That's exactly what happened. MS tossed a ton of $$ at Netflix for the exclusive right to install a Netflix player on the Xbox360. Netflix took their cash, made a big announcement about it, and then this conversation happened:

Netflix CEO: "There's a lot of bad press from the Playstation and Wii crowd, what can we do to get around this exclusivity thing?"
NF Legal: "Well, the contract specifies 'embedded player', can we have people get the content another way without installing anything on the game console??"
NF Programmers: "Sure, put the app on a Blu-Ray disk and have it look like BD-Live content"
Legal: "Yeah, and we can put the player in the PS Store and WiiWare after the deal is up in 12 months"
CEO: "So we get paid for exclusivity *and* we still get to claim that customers can watch movies on other game consoles?? Yay!! Free money!!!"

ps3 disc

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Netflix and Sony have stated several times that the requirement of a disc for the PS3 is only a short-term stopgap measure. There will be a future firmware update that includes the Netflix player at some point.

Disc gets around X360 exclusive

[tigeba]

I believe the required disc for PS3 and now Wii is meant to get around the exclusive Xbox360 / Netflix streaming deal that exists currently. My understanding is that when the exclusive deal is over, the Netflix Player could move over to a normal installable program.

Re:Disc gets around X360 exclusive

[Bleek II]

Yes. The 360 is to remain the only system with Netflix built in. Netflix got around the issue with the PS3 because the PS3 Netflix disc uses BD-Live tech and will work in any blue-ray player not just the PS3. I imagine that Wii version is on disc because they can't break their deal with Microsoft being the only system with Netflix built in.

Re:Disc gets around X360 exclusive

[CrankyFool]

I tried the Netflix PS3 streaming disc on my Samsung BD player -- no love. I don't think it'll work on every BD player.

Re:Disc gets around X360 exclusive

[PrescriptionWarning]

Have you tried playing Uncharted 2 on your Samsung BD player yet? I tell you its so realistic, you can even unplug your TV and it looks just as good!

Dear Submitting Slashdot Reader

[riff420]

"Why should I be required to dedicate my disc slot to stream a movie?" For that matter, why should you be required to dedicate your disc slot to play a game? Don't they know I instead could be KEEPING THINGS IN THERE, LIKE SHOPPING LISTS, OR MAYBE THAT PS2 GAME I LOST THE CASE FOR. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ARE YOU SERIOUSLY WHINING ABOUT THIS? Want to watch a Netflix movie on your Wii? Shut the fuck up and put in the disc. Or drop it onto your favorite USB loader and shut the hell up already.

Re:Dear Submitting Slashdot Reader

[xerxesVII]

It's a shame that perfectly good sense gets modded troll.

Q&A

[girlintraining]

Why should I be required to dedicate my disc slot to stream a movie?

DRM vendors love their physical, read-only media. No matter how advanced or compact portable storage gets, they'll always want for it. If for no other reason than they can continue to play tricks with the formatting and physical defects, creating new mutant DRM schemas to visit upon people's machines. Think about it -- why do we have BluRay, which has a maximum capacity of 50GB? They already have solid-state memory devices that only weigh a few grams and have that much storage capacity -- and they don't degrade, scratch, or fall apart after a few months.

It amazed me that people closely watched the HD-DVD vs. BluRay "format war", and never once did they stop and think -- wait, why are we still relying on optical read-only media in the 21st century?

Re:Q&A

[TheNinjaroach]

Think about it -- why do we have BluRay, which has a maximum capacity of 50GB? They already have solid-state memory devices that only weigh a few grams and have that much storage capacity -- and they don't degrade, scratch, or fall apart after a few months.

They only cost $100 more per unit. Who needs cheap media anyways?

Re:Q&A

[aicrules]

Because a 50GB SSD costs about $100 per unit at minimum, and who wants to pay $100+the cost of the movie? You? I doubt it. Way cheaper to mass produce CD/DVD/Blu Ray.

Re:Q&A

[Big Boss]

Do you really want to pay $200/movie just for the media? That's the biggest reason we are still using optical media. It's CHEAP to make in huge quantities. We're talking a few cents per unit cheap here. Flash memory, even mask ROM, can't match that price point. That's also the biggest reason that the console guys moved from ROM to optical. More space, less production cost. DRM has little to do with it, it's just as easy to crack DRM on optical media as it is on other formats. Just google for the piracy scenes for the various consoles and movies. The media formats don't matter to the pirates.

Re:Q&A

[Zantac69]

...and they don't degrade, scratch, or fall apart after a few months.

Which is exactly WHY they have not transitioned to a "stick" format that you could plug into your player. They prefer to have the media to be a little fragile...that way you might have to replace it if your 3 year-old or your drunk friend mishandles your disc.

Re:Q&A

[Reapman]

Um from my understanding, the DRM is in the username... No I think the reason is far more likely that they have an exclusive agreement for the 360. Remember Sony AND Netflix has said the Disc is a temporary solution. I'm assuming it's temporary for the Wii as well, temporary until the end of the agreement with MS.

Why am I still relying on optical media? The only viable alternative is online. However not only can my ISP not sustain the Bitrate for audio and video that Blu supports (or even HD-DVD supported), but they'd cut me off within a week for going over my usage. The solid state media you talk about is more expensive (compared to a disc) to produce, and honestly doesn't last any longer then an optical disc would, especially if they had to mass produce them to replace every single DVD/BR disc sold. I can get a recordable BR disc for a few bucks, but a 64g stick goes for more then that.

Re:Q&A

[cmiller173]

It amazed me that people closely watched the HD-DVD vs. BluRay "format war", and never once did they stop and think -- wait, why are we still relying on optical read-only media in the 21st century?

The same reason that CD beat out DAT (digital audio tape). For a tape to be loaded with content each tape had to be run across a record head which is relatively time consuming compared to stamping a CD. Flash memory, even some sort of write once version, still has to be loaded with content and is still orders of magnitude slower than stamping a disc. Plus the huge capacity solid state memory devices are much more expensive.

Re:Q&A

[girlintraining]

Because a 50GB SSD costs about $100 per unit at minimum

who said anything about using an SSD? Did people suddenly forget that we used to have solid-state read-only memory, known as PROMs?

Re:Q&A

[aicrules]

It would still be significantly higher production cost, which I clearly have no basis to put a real number to. Read-only SSD memory is not significantly different in production cost compared to a writable. The cost to product the hardware itself requires much more than a disc, and then the cost to duplicate is also significantly higher because of how long it takes to copy.

Re:Q&A

[Anonymous Coward]

anyways isn't actually a word, strange but true

Re:Q&A

[b1t r0t]

Yeah, it's too bad there isn't some way to make solid state memory that gets its data all at once as part of the manufacturing process.

PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[BBF_BBF]

Rumor has it that Microsoft has an exclusivity contract with netflix for streaming built into gaming consoles which expires sometime near the end of year.

The PS3 will go disc free later this year, but didn't supply details as to why. However, since the Wii has far less storage, this may or may not be possible on the Wii...

http://kotaku.com/5391286/netflix-on-ps3-getting-embedded-solution-late-next-year

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[alen]

even if there was no exclusive MS deal than it would take some months to code the functionality into the existing firmware, test it, etc. there is also a storage limitation for the firmware and PS3 along with the Wii keep adding new features, channels, etc. Could it be that the Netflix software needs more space than what is currently available so that a disc is the only practical solution?

when the consoles were released there was some forward thinking to add features, but it seems feature creep is outpacing the hardware yet again

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[marcansoft]

A player does not take much space, and discs can't add storage to a Wii anyway (for caching or what have you). The Wii's ridiculously small storage and lack of expandability does not affect this particular application.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[markus o'farkus]

Yup. NetFlix dances around the issue (see: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/26/netflix-ps3-disc-must-remain-in-system-until-2010-update/ ). But it's pretty obvious this is the reason why.

I don't think firmware QA is the primary reason here. It's an app. There's not much difference between QAing an app loading from local storage vs. an app loading from disc.

Actually at this point, PS3 Netflix streaming is superior to the Xbox solution... you might need to put a disc in, but you don't need to fork over $50/year for an Xbox Live Gold membership.

Seems like a decent tradeoff.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, the BBC iPlayer application for the Wii is quite capable of streaming TV in standard def quality that is pretty close to broadcast.

I don't see why the Netflix app would be so much larger. Streaming HD content wouldn't significantly increase the size of the app, if it increased it at all.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know anything about the PS3? Have you not seen that some demos are already hitting 2.5GB (yes, Gig) and install fine, that you can download much bigger movie files from the PSN, and transfer much bigger files via the browser? I have an 16GB m2ts video file on mine, I'm sure other owners have probably exceed this. And as for firmware, Netflix have zero chance of touching that. You think Sony would let another company touch the PS3 firmware?

The Wii is an under-powered piece of shit, getting decent video performance from that and having no real local storage is the main issue. Plus Netflix titles are HD (pretty poor, but beyond Wii's resolution) and have 5.1 surround, which the Wii cannot handle.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[marcansoft]

You aren't going to be streaming HD on a Wii anyway. It doesn't have enough CPU muscle to decode HD H.264 (or any other modern codec) and it doesn't have the capability to output HD anyway.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it's surprising that someone into consoles & interested in Netflix playback would still be ignorant of the likely reason why it requires a disc.

I think that a Netflix app is probably on the order of standard game you'd download on the Wii. Video files aren't saved locally, it's all just streaming.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[robmv]

There is no need for a complex firmware update, the PS3 firmware already support special icons on the XMB to be used as placeholder to download an application that will use that icon, like the enhanced photo viewer and Folding at Home/Life with Playtation. So the new firmware update must only add that icon and point it to the PSN servers to download it. Another thing is to build the application, so Sony could try to refactor the firmware blu-ray software in order to be able to reuse part of it on installed applications, like the Java VM needed by blue-ray live currently used by the netflix disk)

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

why? because of pirating. I know it hasn't been cracked yet, but they aren't taking any chances. all of them wish for worldofwarcraft model.
or to save on media and stores cost.

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a decently fast Windows PC on the same network, I just pay $40 once to PlayOn and I get streaming with no issues. And you can also stream Hulu, and CBS, and a number of other sites, not just Netflix.

- Pitabred (anon since I've moderated, and I'm just a happy customer, not an employee or in any other way related to the software)

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[Cato]

You're right, and in fact in the UK, the BBC has created a Wii channel (downloadable app) for iPlayer, their TV streaming service: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8357777.stm

Re:PS3 will go Disc Free in Late 2010

[leuk_he]

The wii has 512 Mb of flash internal. You can put data on a SD, but it will first be copied to the internal memory.

internet channel is 222blocks x 128k = 28MB. There are romours that nintento put a cap of 40MByte on downloadable games. You can seay create a player in that space.

The main reason for this is the market. You cannot put a link in a store to buy, you want it in a box. It is however possible to install a channal from a disk (e.g. mario kart), but this obvious was a step too much for the people who thought this up.

There goes the market

[rpunit]

for roku.. At least my roku can do hd

Re:There goes the market

[stoolpigeon]

I've been going back and forth on getting a roku player and this makes it a lot easier to hold off. What I like about this is that it pushes the set top box folks to go ruther to justify their systems. Roku has Pandora, that's nice. If they support playing local files that would help too, and I'd be interested in getting one again.

Re:There goes the market

[NewWorldDan]

The Roku is an excellent little device. It just plain works. The only downsides to it is that it takes up another input on the TV (I've only got 3 to work with) and it's another remote to deal with. The good new about this little annoucement is that I'll be able to move the Roku down to the rec room so I can watch things while I workout.

Re:There goes the market

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Roku box and enjoy it greatly. I regularly watch Netflix movies in 720p. To me, the Wii is a non-factor because it's maximum resolution is 480p (even with component video cables).

What would really do it for me is external USB storage and VLC on the Roku. That would be truly awesome. Short of that, a samba client would let me play off of a local file server. That would be cool as well.

Re:There goes the market

[stoolpigeon]

I agree. Right now I don't have an HD tv - so it's a non-issue for me at the moment. I was going to buy the top end Roku player, as when my current tv dies my situation will change. But this is great for me because it buys me more time to get the capability I wanted without having to buy new hardware now. By the time I get a new TV, there will probably be all kinds of alternatives that don't exist yet. Or I'll have saved enough to put together a very nice multimedia pc.

Re:There goes the market

[slumberheart]

I like my Roku--I've got one of the fancy XR's. I got the PS3 disc, but I have yet to bother going and setting it all up because the Roku already does almost everything what I need it to without sounding like every movie was filmed on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
If Roku would deliver on letting me browse all their movies and add them to my queue, I'll never use my PS3 for Netflix.

Re:There goes the market

[Killer Orca]

Something like this might interest you. http://www.popbox.com/

Unless I'm mistaken...

[jj00]

It took 3 years for the Wii to get an easy way to watch movies.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet it still beat the pants off the DVD-and-Netflix-ready XBox360 and the Blu-Ray-and-Netflix-capable PS3, sales-wise. Does this tell you anything about the market for game consoles?

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[theJML]

You mean for gimmicks and population segments? I mean seriously, the 360 and the PS3 fought over the same group of people. the 360 with HDDVD, the PS3 with BluRay, but both cater to more hardcore gamers and didn't really use any 'new cutting edge user interation' like the Wii did. The Wii-mote, the Wii-Fit all were completely new at the time for a console and drove sales. Coupled with the gamer demographics the Wii aimed at (not hard core gamers so much as kids, older adults, etc...) and the game genre's released for the Wii (proving once again that blood and gore are not the only good things in games by warping back to days of Mario and puzzles), the Wii really didn't have direct competition and that fact drove the adoption rates through the roof.

I highly doubt that the insinuation you make (that people don't want to watch movies on their consoles) was the driving force behind the purchase of the Wii.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Tetsujin]

I highly doubt that the insinuation you make (that people don't want to watch movies on their consoles) was the driving force behind the purchase of the Wii.

But if a lot of people bought the Wii despite this limitation, that supports the assertion that most people don't care about watching movies on the console...

Personally I haven't wanted to use a game console as a DVD player since my PS2 showed me what a bad DVD player implementation looked like...

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[bipbop]

Gosh, it's been twenty years and my Super Nintendo still won't play movies! Now, do I upgrade to a Sony Nintendo or a Microsoft Nintendo, or do I go out and buy a Betamax deck?

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[sexconker]

And yet it still beat the pants off the DVD-and-Netflix-ready XBox360 and the Blu-Ray-and-Netflix-capable PS3, sales-wise. Does this tell you anything about the market for game consoles?

Uh... game consoles should focus on games and not launch at five hundred ninety-nine U.S. dollars?

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[marcansoft]

The Wii was DVD ready until the latest iteration of drives. Nintendo had DVD support in there all along, including in their SDK and firmware. All they would've had to do is release a DVD Player Channel with a system update and suddenly all Wiis would gain DVD playback capability. Why they didn't do that is anyone's guess.

They've since killed the DVD readback ability in newer drives because it was being used for piracy (if you can read DVDs, you can read DVD-Rs. If you can read DVD-Rs, you can use software hacks or hardware MITM modchips to play games from them).

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if a lot of people bought the Wii despite this limitation, that supports the assertion that most people don't care about watching movies on the console...

That's a assumed correlation and correlation does not necessitate causation.

In other words, one cannot claim people who bought the Wii did so because they want to support a system that didn't play movies simply because the Wii doesn't play movies. There's no proof to that. The only thing the fact of people buying Wii's tell us is that there are people who want to play Wii games.

If you want to hypothesis that people don't care about watching movies on consoles and the success of the Wii is a result of this, you can. But then you'll have to prove your hypothesis by doing lots of research. A simple way would be doing some market research by polling Wii uses and simply ask them "did you buy a Wii because it did not play movies?".

My guess is that you'll find results that approach 100% of the people answering "no".

I'd also guess the only system of the "big 3" that some part of the market bought primarily for it's movie-playing abilities is the PS3. And this is because a) It was the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market for some times after it's launch and included this little known game player called the "Playstation" for free b) as Blu-Ray "won" the HD format war, more people choose PS3 because of this bonus feature.

So, to reiterate, the number of people bought a Wii does NOT support the assertion that they don't care about watching movies on the console because it doesn't say WHY they bought the Wii. Said assertion is simply your unsubstantiated belief.

Despite the fact that said assertion is easily illogical given the fact that it's defeated by the counter argument that people also bought PS3's and 360s, which do play movies, ergo, you'd also have to assertion that people DO care about watching movies on consoles, which goes against the other assertions. And I'm pretty sure there's some research out there that some people who bought these other consoles to watch movies on, as a primary purchase factor.

So, you're analysis is pretty flawed.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Myopic]

By 'gimmick' do you mean the motion-sensing controller? or something else?

If that is what you mean, I wish to state my emphatic disagreement.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Myopic]

If it helps you, then think of them not as "game consoles" but as media centers, or entertainment devices, or whatever semantic construction will work for you.

I want every device in my life to do as much as possible, so long as it can do it well. I would never say that my cell phone shouldn't allow me to send texts, just because grandpa couldn't send texts on his rotary phone.

Sometimes I browse the web on my Wii (but not often, because it does not do that very well). If it could play movies, that would be sweet. I would never say that a game console (or whatever you decide to call it) shouldn't play movies just because my SEGA Genesis couldn't play movies.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Tetsujin]

But if a lot of people bought the Wii despite this limitation, that supports the assertion that most people don't care about watching movies on the console...

That's a assumed correlation and correlation does not necessitate causation.

In other words, one cannot claim people who bought the Wii did so because they want to support a system that didn't play movies simply because the Wii doesn't play movies.

No, but it tells us those people did not go shopping for a console, say "Oh, this one doesn't play DVDs" and move on... If playing videos on their consoles mattered so much to them, they probably wouldn't have bought the Wii.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, one cannot claim people who bought the Wii did so because they want to support a system that didn't play movies simply because the Wii doesn't play movies. There's no proof to that.

Of course there isn't. Nobody said that. Nobody's saying that now. Nobody even implied it. That is, in fact, an entirely absurd scenario, disregarding people similar to the "I'll buy whatever company X makes because they support Linux"-style obsessives.

The implication appeared to be that people buying the Wii don't care about its lack of movie-playing capabilities, and that sales over the past three years have, even to the entirely unpleasable "correlation does not imply causation" buzzphrase crowd, at least shown a non-trivial amount of data to back this up, as the Wii has never been able to play movies (not without homebrew), yet both the XBox360 and PS3 have since their respective day ones. Please stop trying to change the subject.

If you want to hypothesis that people don't care about watching movies on consoles and the success of the Wii is a result of this, you can. But then you'll have to prove your hypothesis by doing lots of research. A simple way would be doing some market research by polling Wii uses and simply ask them "did you buy a Wii because it did not play movies?".

Irrelevant. A hypothesis that people don't care about watching movies on consoles has absolutely no relation to any questions regarding the user making a deliberate decision against it. "Did you buy a Wii because it did not play movies?" is asking if the user made that deliberate decision against it. "Did you care that the Wii does not play movies when you bought it?" is a better question, and I would hazard a guess that the results of that question would tend away from 100% very quickly.

A related follow-up would be to ask purchasers of XBox360s and PS3s the same question, obviously inverted to "Was the fact that the [XBox360|PS3] can play movies something that influenced your decision to buy it?", or something similar. From that and the aforementioned question about the Wii's movie-playing capabilities and the concerns of the Wii-buying public regarding them, you can at least get some data points as to the reason people are buying these consoles. Similar questions can also be posed in the negative sense with regards to the Wii (i.e. "Did you choose the [XBox360|PS3] over the Wii because the latter does not play movies?"), though may not be as useful if the target audience was also not influenced by the XBox360's or PS3's movie-playing capabilities.

I maintain that the initial evidence — that is, the Wii has consistently outsold the XBox360 and PS3 over the course of the three years of its existence — is particularly strong for this argument. Without further direct research as to the specific reasoning behind people's decisions (said possible research being discussed in the previous paragraphs), it very clearly implies either a market for consoles that do not play movies, or the comparative irrelevance of the ability to play movies on the console-purchasing public at large. It may very well be true that there is significant overlap between purchasers of the Wii and purchasers of movie-playing consoles, but the superior sales figures*, from my personal perspective, imply that movie-playing is not a significant concern of console purchasers.

Ergo, your counterargument, as well as examples you have posted, are considerably flawed.

*: Of course, this assertion assumes that for any given household or purchaser, only one of each console is purchased. If the norm is for each purchaser to purchase multiple Wiis for some reason, this may skew sales results and obviously prove to the detriment of the entire theory.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you can buy a dedicated DVD player at the supermarket for less than the price of most Wii games, nobody cares that the Wii can't play DVDs.

I got mine for the WiiFit, and as an alternative to PC games for the kids. The former helped me lose 40 pounds, and go from an "obese" BMI to "normal". (Part of that was the tracking software in WiiFit -- it helps when you can see your progress, or your backsliding.)

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[sexconker]

Then you haven't learned the lesson.

MS and Sony have bled tons of money.
Nintendo has been printing money non stop.

I like devices to do many things, sure.
I love my PS3.

But if a company wants to profit they've got to fit the device to the market, and not the other way around.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[josath]

My speculation is they didn't want to pay the $10-$20/unit licensing fee to MPEG/CSS/etc people to legally allow DVD playback.

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[aztracker1]

People don't like playing games that require two directional inputs, and a dozen buttons?

Re:Unless I'm mistaken...

[marcansoft]

They could've sold the DVD player channel for that price though.

How to reserve your disc

[Anonymous Coward]

Go go http://www.netflix.com/InstantStreamingDisc?device=Wii to reserve a disc.

Re:How to reserve your disc

[Myopic]

I presume that worked for you, but for me it re-routed to /MemberHome. If I go to just http://www.netflix.com/InstantStreamingDisc (without the Wii specifier) I get a page to request a PS3 disc.

I have a Wii, but not a PS3, so I'll continue to wait patiently. Thanks for the tip anyway; I hope to use it soon.

Re:How to reserve your disc

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, it worked for me. You could try this instead:
      http://www.netflix.com/wii
that's where I started, but it redirected to the link above.

Re:How to reserve your disc

[TooMuchToDo]

Worked like a champ for me at parent's link. Just reserved my Wii disc (already had a PS3 disc).

Re:How to reserve your disc

[Tyler Durden]

So I assume there's no place online to just download and then burn it to DVD. :)

Re:How to reserve your disc

[Myopic]

Maybe I should try it on a different OS when I get home. I'm on Jolicloud Linux right now, so maybe there are some redirect shenanigans. Thanks for the links though, I'm definitely following up on this.

As many others have already said...

[Pojut]

...Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Netflix for the time being. Either due to technical or legal reasons, requiring the disc is a way to get around this. Considering Sony has already said the required disc is temporary, this implies the exclusivity deal is nearing its end. This also implies any disc required for the Wii would be temporary as well.

Calm down people. Jeebus.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Microsoft has the exclusivity deal to have it built into the "dashboard" of a console for the time being. I read that PS3 gets around exclusivity agreement by using a Java program within the Blu-Ray disc that calls up the Netflix stream. I'm sure that Wii will do something similar, though it won't be able to use Blu-Ray Java because, clearly, it doesn't have a BR drive.

As for the size of the stream, Netflix won't fully buffer a stream if you pause it. It only goes so far out. I remember once someone said that they had isolated the temporary stream files and they're not more than 5MB or so at any given time, in addition to less than 10MB for the actual player. The Wii's memory is more than enough to make this happen via Dashboard once the MS exclusivity runs out.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Pojut]

Actually, the PS3 currently uses BD-Live to stream Netflix, but other than that I fully agree with what you say.

Looking forward to this, it will mean we will have Netflix streaming on all floors in our townhouse (PCs upstairs, 360/PS3 in the living room, Wii in the basement).

Re:As many others have already said...

[Myopic]

To be clear, I'm not miffed that I have to use a disc to watch Netflix on my Wii; I'm miffed that exclusive contracts are legal, and that Netflix signed one with Microsoft.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Pojut]

The vast majority of the time, I would agree with you...but in this instance, considering the majority of Netflix's streaming services used Silverlight when Netflix Streaming arrived on the 360, this didn't suprise me at all.

Not saying it's right, just saying I understand why it happend in this case.

Re:As many others have already said...

[bws111]

Why should exclusive contracts be illegal? Exactly who are they hurting? In this case, NetFlix benefits by gaining customers (and whatever cash/technology they got from Microsoft), Microsoft benefits by having a differentiator for their platform, XBOX 360 users benefit by being able to use the service, and no-one else is affected in the slightest. Sure, PS3 and Wii customers were not able to use NetFlix, but so what? Exclusive contracts are one of the more basic elements of life. Own property? You have an exclusive contract for that (the deed). Rent an apartment? You have an exclusive contract (the lease). And lets not forget the granddaddy of exclusive contracts, marriage.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Myopic]

Those are all good points, but not completely convincing. The existence of rental property and marriage doesn't make exclusive secret contracts between corporations a good idea. Who are they hurting? From my perspective, me. I want something that is prohibited by a secret exclusive contract, so as an advocate for my own interests in this and many other cases, I wish this form of contract were not allowed.

And this secret exclusive contract isn't so onerous, but others are, on a sliding scale.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Osty]

The existence of rental property and marriage doesn't make exclusive secret contracts between corporations a good idea.

Who said the contract was secret? Microsoft and Netflix had huge press releases when they made that contract. Not exactly a secret if you're telling anybody and everybody who will listen about it.

Who are they hurting? From my perspective, me. I want something that is prohibited by a secret exclusive contract, so as an advocate for my own interests in this and many other cases, I wish this form of contract were not allowed.

Are you really? If you want an embedded Netflix streaming solution, you can easily go out and buy an Xbox. But more importantly, you have no "right" to have Netflix streaming video embedded in your video player, just as you have no right to my house. As the parent said, I have an exclusive contract on the use of my house due to my ownership of it. I'm hurting you by denying you access to my house. Thus by your logic I shouldn't be allowed to own a house.

And this secret exclusive contract isn't so onerous, but others are, on a sliding scale.

When an exclusive contract is truly damaging (a contract between competitors to fix prices, for example), there's protection for that. Just because certain types of exclusive contracts can be abused doesn't mean that all exclusive contracts should be disallowed.

Re:As many others have already said...

[Myopic]

What else can I say but that I disagree.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[flerchin]

Still no captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It's almost as if it they want a class action lawsuit or something. Ten percent of your userbase is no small amount (I would think).

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Pojut]

I Googled "why no captions netflix streaming". Here is the very first entry listed in the results:

http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitles.html

You're welcome :-)

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Anonymous Coward]

Still no captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It's almost as if it they want a class action lawsuit or something. Ten percent of your userbase is no small amount (I would think).

So if the Handicapped can't have it, nobody can have it?

Sorry for leaving my PC module at home...

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[markus o'farkus]

That was very polite of you. You could have gone with this:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+no+captions+netflix+streaming

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[flerchin]

It's been three years. I'd say you've had it for a while.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[flerchin]

Gee thanks. It's not like I haven't already researched the issue. If you read that post, it's a bunch of nonsense gobbleygook and FUD that works out to, we don't want to do it.

He says they would have to reencode the entire library with subtitles enabled in order to stream the captions. This is of course BS because the captions are not video data and do not need to be encoded.

He says that they are developing special display technology that would display the text as a separate stream in silverlight. Again FUD, I have written programs that display text in silverlight. It's quite easy, as you would expect.

The data for all of the captions for a movie is usually around 100 KB and is freely available for use on nearly every dvd.

The bottom line is that they do not care to have their programmers waste even 10 minutes on the Deaf community

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Pojut]

Gee thanks. It's not like I haven't already researched the issue.

No need to be sarcastic or rude, I was just trying to help.

If you read that post, it's a bunch of nonsense gobbleygook and FUD that works out to, we don't want to do it.

I did read the post, and that is not at all what it sounds like. It sounds like they have to figure out a way to overlay a secondary stream on top of the video stream. Obviously, you seem think this is easy to accomplish, so why don't you contact them and tell them how to do it?

He says they would have to reencode the entire library with subtitles enabled in order to stream the captions. This is of course BS because the captions are not video data and do not need to be encoded.

That is the exact opposite> of what he says. He says that reencoding the entire library would be time and cost prohibitive, as well as angering a lot of non-hearing-impaired english speakers. As a result, they are working on laying a secondary stream that contains only the subtitles over the video stream. He also says that they looked around for existing tech to do this, and found nothing.

Did you even read it, or did you just skim over it because you are pissed off?

He says that they are developing special display technology that would display the text as a separate stream in silverlight. Again FUD, I have written programs that display text in silverlight. It's quite easy, as you would expect.

As I said, if you already have the answer, why not stop bitching and contact them with the solution so they can implement it faster?

The data for all of the captions for a movie is usually around 100 KB and is freely available for use on nearly every dvd.

See above comments about submitting your idea.

The bottom line is that they do not care to have their programmers waste even 10 minutes on the Deaf community

The bottom line is that unless they release something RIGHT NOW, you are going to be pissed off. Calm down, read and understand what is written, and stop with the knee-jerk reaction.

They are going to give you what you want, and likely at no additional cost to you. Either submit your grand idea to them or stop complaining.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[loafula]

Why don't you just learn to hear? Huh?

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[flerchin]

That is the exact opposite of what he says. He says that reencoding the entire library would be time and cost prohibitive, as well as angering a lot of non-hearing-impaired english speakers. As a result, they are working on laying a secondary stream that contains only the subtitles over the video stream. He also says that they looked around for existing tech to do this, and found nothing.

Did you even read it, or did you just skim over it because you are pissed off?

What he says is FUD. The reason he says that entire thing is to try and confuse people out of the real issue. Of course reencoding the entire library would be cost prohibitive and expensive. Of course doing it that way would annoy the rest of the population. Of course, that is not the way that captions are done, so his entire point is moot. If the captions were encoded along with the video stream, then they would be subject to compression artifacts and buffering issues and all sorts of other problems. No other captioning technology works that way. You simply read the time encoded text file and display the text on the screen at the appropriate time in the movie. It's easy, most everyone does it. He hasn't found the technology available for what he describes because that's not the way it's done. If he doesn't know that, it's because he hasn't researched the issue beyond a 5 minute conversation with someone who has.

In the tech demo SDK for silverlight there is an example for placing text on top of video. I don't need to submit any grand idea to them. Netflix is not an Open Source company, and as such is not looking for code submissions.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Pojut]

What he says is FUD. The reason he says that entire thing is to try and confuse people out of the real issue. Of course reencoding the entire library would be cost prohibitive and expensive. Of course doing it that way would annoy the rest of the population. Of course, that is not the way that captions are done, so his entire point is moot.

Did you ever stop to consider he may have been addressing an issue raised by multiple people that don't have an understand about the technology the way you do? Netflix has literally millions of subscribers...they aren't all geeks, you know.

If the captions were encoded along with the video stream, then they would be subject to compression artifacts and buffering issues and all sorts of other problems. No other captioning technology works that way. You simply read the time encoded text file and display the text on the screen at the appropriate time in the movie. It's easy, most everyone does it.

And most everyone doesn't have to get it to work on multiple devices that use different delivery methods.

He hasn't found the technology available for what he describes because that's not the way it's done. If he doesn't know that, it's because he hasn't researched the issue beyond a 5 minute conversation with someone who has.

So, adding the text to a secondary stream, overlaying it onto the video stream, and giving the user an option to turn it on or off isn't how it's done?

In the tech demo SDK for silverlight there is an example for placing text on top of video. I don't need to submit any grand idea to them. Netflix is not an Open Source company, and as such is not looking for code submissions.

If it really were that simple, why do you think they haven't done it then? There is obviously a demand for it, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people dont use Netflix because of this very reason. Come on, the way you are talking about it you are making it sound like they are deliberately NOT doing it.

I'm sure they have more pressing things to attend to than ignoring potential new customers on purpose. That's what the kids call "bat-shit crazy".

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Rysc]

What he says, specifically, is:

1) We don't do it.
2) We can't do it the same way we do subtitles for foreign language films.
3) We're going to do it and we have chosen a subtitle format.
4) The subtitle format is not well supported by our various viewing devices/software.
5) It will be done soon anyway.

So maybe it could be done faster. So maybe they didn't even try to do it until recently. Oh, horror!

tl;dr No malice here, calm down and relax.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Myopic]

FUD means "fear, uncertainty, doubt".

As for fear, I don't know if lack of captions scares you, but it doesn't scare me.

As for uncertainty, he tried to proffer a timescale on which the feature might be available. That is the opposite of uncertainty.

As for doubt, uh, I don't know, it just doesn't apply here.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[loafula]

lol

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[aminorex]

We need more complaining, not less. By using silverlight netflix has screwed over their customers. Unless we complain, no lesson will be learned. If you don't want silverlight crammed down your throat, get out and complain!

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Pojut]

We need more complaining, not less. By using silverlight netflix has screwed over their customers. Unless we complain, no lesson will be learned. If you don't want silverlight crammed down your throat, get out and complain!

Netflix streams just fine on my Windows XP box, my 360, my PS3, and soon my Wii...if I had a Roku or any number of Blu-Ray players or TVs designed for it, those would stream Netflix just fine as well. All of this is done at ZERO additional cost to my Netflix subscription, despite the substantial additional cost for Netflix to run the service and pay the licensing fees. What do I have to complain about? That I can't stream Netflix on my Dell Mini 9 or HTPC because they have Ubuntu 9.10 installed? That Netflix is providing me additional services at no additional cost? Oh noes...big deal.

We highly enjoy the service they provide, so we give them our money. If you don't like the service they provide, then don't give them your money.

Sounds like someone needs to call the waaaaaaaaambulance.

Re:Deaf and Hard of Hearing still snubbed

[Anonymous Coward]

What he says is FUD. The reason he says that entire thing is to try and confuse people out of the real issue. Of course reencoding the entire library would be cost prohibitive and expensive. Of course doing it that way would annoy the rest of the population. Of course, that is not the way that captions are done, so his entire point is moot. If the captions were encoded along with the video stream, then they would be subject to compression artifacts and buffering issues and all sorts of other problems. No other captioning technology works that way. You simply read the time encoded text file and display the text on the screen at the appropriate time in the movie. It's easy, most everyone does it. He hasn't found the technology available for what he describes because that's not the way it's done. If he doesn't know that, it's because he hasn't researched the issue beyond a 5 minute conversation with someone who has.

If I remember correctly from my foray into trying to caption home DVDs, most DVD subtitles are encoded as images (with transparency) that are overlaid over the video track. Because of this, it's not easy to convert subtitles on a DVD into soft captions; you'd basically have to OCR each of those encoded images. Yet making a hard-captioned file would also involve re-encoding the entire movie.

If Netflix is in fact pulling from DVDs to get the files that they stream (and not getting a separate digital source from the distributors, then yes, this would be a problem, as most DVDs are encoded with captions in the subtitle track instead of as closed captions.

Could they do it differently if they had a reliable source of scripts for the captions? Absolutely. Do they have a reliable source other than the DVDs themselves? I don't know. Would it be awesome if the publishers/distributors stepped in and helped out and provided them caption scripts? You bet! But I don't know that anyone's volunteering.

Why the Disk?

[gearloos]

"The thing I can't understand is why the PS3 and Wii have to require a disc?" LOLZ--Let me throw a couple four letter words your way... MPAA, RIAA, SONY, theres also that the disk has DRM and that way you can't give your friend the code to use on his ps3/wii.

Re:Why the Disk?

[Pojut]

Wrong.

From a previous post of mine: "Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Netflix for the time being. Either due to technical or legal reasons, requiring the disc is a way to get around this. Considering Sony has already said the required disc is temporary, this implies the exclusivity deal is nearing its end. This also implies any disc required for the Wii would be temporary as well."

To add to this, it's also possible that since Silverlight is currently used for streaming except to the PS3, there is a technology issue. Streaming to PS3's currently uses the BD-Live protocol, hence the need for a disc. Once either the exclusivity deal runs out or they implement a different streaming solution for the PS3, the disc will be no longer needed.

I hate the four-letter words you mentioned as much as the next guy, but they aren't the cause of everything.

This May Be dumb but...

[rshol]

... my Wii does not output in 1080p, will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD? If not, why bother?

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the average user is still happy with 480p?

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Pojut]

I would say because the bulk of what Netflix currently streams is only available in standard-def anyways...the amount of HD content they stream grows on a regular basis, but it is still a small percentage of their overall offerings.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Reason58]

... my Wii does not output in 1080p, will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD? If not, why bother?

The majority of the Netflix streams are 480 (DVD). The best ones top out at 720, and even those require permission from the studio to use.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[stoolpigeon]

I'm willing to bet that a significant number of Wiis are not connected to televisions capable of 1080p.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that matters because?

I'm willing to bet that 100% of Wiis cannot output content at 1080p, or even 720p.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[LtGordon]

... my Wii does not output in 1080p, will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD? If not, why bother?

Because, believe it or not, most Wii end users would rather have Netflix streaming in 480p than nothing at all. The vast majority of end users still do most of their at-home movie-watching in 1080p and are ok with that.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Tetsujin]

And that matters because?

I'm willing to bet that 100% of Wiis cannot output content at 1080p, or even 720p.

You missed the point.

He was saying that if the Wii is connected to a TV that can't display hi-def, then it doesn't matter if the Wii hardware is incapable of output in hi-def...

My knee-jerk reaction to the news of a Netflix player for Wii was that the display resolution would suck - but then I thought about it for half a second and remembered that Netflix streaming resolution probably isn't any better anyway...

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Idiomatick]

I'm willing to bet the 10Mb/s or so would also be an issue.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[jitterman]

will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD?

No. From the summary:

motang writes "Netflix and Nintendo is set to announce Netflix streaming service for the Wii soon. Subscribers ... can watch non-HD version of the movies on their Wii ..."

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Gothmolly]

a) there's no way a Wii could decode HD
b) the Wii does not have HD outputs
c) you're trolling

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[geminidomino]

The vast majority of end users still do most of their at-home movie-watching in 1080p and are ok with that.

Did you brainfart there, and mean "480p and are ok with that" or did I miss something in my pre-coffee haze?

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Myopic]

My guess is that it's because 1080p is not the exclusive way to enjoy movies.

I'm actually a little surprised the question got out of your mind and through your fingers before you realized that obvious conclusion.

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the DVDs I rent from Netflix output at 1080p either. Why bother?

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[colesw]

b) yes it does

Component video is capable of carrying signals such as 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p[1], and new high definition TVs support the use of component video up to their native resolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_video

Re:This May Be dumb but...

[seebs]

I have roughly 500 DVDs, none of which display in HD. Nor do I care whether they display in HD. I don't actually see it as a big deal; I am watching for dialogue and plot, not for pixel-count.

Canada?

[FrigBot]

I wonder if we'll get this in Canada. Probably not. Xbox Live doesn't get Netflix in Canada, but I was hoping this would be a change. Not holding my breath though.

Re:Canada?

[Pojut]

You may not get Netflix up there, but you DO get Showcase, which means you get to watch the new Pure Pwnage series without having to sulk around the Internet to find a mirror :/

480p

[Crock23A]

The highest output on the Wii is 480p. It looks great for Wii games but i would imagine most Netflix streaming customers want their stuff in HD.

Re:480p

[killmenow]

Umm, I'd wager the majority of Netflix users are probably still getting regular old DVDs (I am) which typically are 720x480 which is what 480p is. This would be just like putting the DVD in and watching it, only not having to deal with mailing DVDs.

More and more things are coming out on Bluray but the HD catalog still is dwarfed by DVDs.

Re:480p

[Pojut]

As stated above, most Netflix streaming content is in standard def still. They are adding more HD content on a regular basis, but the amount of HD content is still miniscule compared to the amount of SD content they offer for streaming.

Re:480p

[Tetsujin]

The highest output on the Wii is 480p. It looks great for Wii games but i would imagine most Netflix streaming customers want their stuff in HD.

Well, sure, that's what they want... But I think most of Netflix's streaming encodes are still 480p...

(I don't think 480p looks "great" for Wii games, personally... For video it would probably be alright 'cause you don't get all the aliasing problems you get with polygon graphics...)

Re:480p

[jitterman]

Well... I replaced my recently stolen 720p television with a 1080p - but as I don't own a BluRay player (and really don't think I'll be getting one any time soon), I'm not spoiled yet. It would be really nice to have HD streaming, but I won't be upset that currently the best I'll get is 720x480. At least the Wii will finally join in the fun.

Would be nice outside USA

[yabos]

Still waiting for this in Canada and other parts of the world. I think the main problem is the CRTC wanting to control how all content is distributed in Canada.
Netflix: Does not work
Hulu: Does not work

Re:Would be nice outside USA

[Yvan256]

I think the problem with Hulu is about licensing.

Re:Would be nice outside USA

[CastrTroy]

The fact that iTunes allows you to rent and buy digital movies makes me think that it's more to do with licensing and companies not wanting to deal with the Canadian market, moreso than anything to do with the CRTC. Do you have any information to back up that the CRTC is causing problems?

Microsoft has an exclusive deal

[iamghetto]

Back in August when this was news:

http://www.crispygamer.com/blogs/post/2009/08/11/NOT-NEWS-Xbox-360s-Netflix-Exclusivity.aspx

The exclusivity was tied to an online delivery service integrated into the console. Netflix gets around this with Wii and PS3 by essentially selling a "Netflix Game" that streams the video from the service.

Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

From Netflix:

Movies, TV Episodes Streamed Instantly From Netflix Headed to Nintendo’s Wii Console This Spring
Millions of U.S. Wii Owners Will Have the Opportunity to Access the World’s Largest Online Movie Rental Service
REDMOND, Wash., and LOS GATOS, Calif., Jan. 13, 2010 – Nintendo of America Inc. and Netflix, Inc. [Nasdaq: NFLX] today announced an agreement that will allow Netflix members who are also owners of Nintendo’s Wii home console to instantly watch thousands of movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix directly to their TVs. Netflix is scheduled to go live on the Wii console this spring in the United States at no additional cost to Netflix members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and a broadband Internet connection.

The partnership between the two companies will extend the reach of content streamed from Netflix farther than ever before, thanks to the mainstream popularity of the Wii console. Wii remains the fastest-selling home console in history, and reaches more consumers than any other device that currently supports streaming movies from Netflix. In December 2009, Nintendo sold well in excess of 3 million Wii consoles in the United States. Wii is the top-selling home video game system of this generation, and as such brings the Netflix experience to a broad and diverse mass market.
“Our research shows that 86 percent of all U.S. Wii consoles are located in the living room,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “The Wii console is the social hub around which friends and family members gather to play games and have fun. Soon both new and longtime Wii owners will enjoy the benefits of Netflix – and a variety of informational and entertainment options – by being Netflix members and connecting their consoles to the Internet.”

“Our goal is to offer Netflix members as many ways as possible to watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix right to their TVs and to give non-members more and compelling reasons to consider the service,” said Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings. “Joining forces with Nintendo, which has been so immensely popular with consumers since its introduction, is a very meaningful step in that direction.”

With 11.1 million U.S. subscribers as of Sept. 30, 2009, Netflix continues to expand the ways in which its members can watch movies and TV shows streamed directly to TVs via a range of Netflix-ready devices such as the Wii console. Netflix memberships start as low as $8.99 a month, and members also can receive unlimited DVDs delivered quickly to their homes. At the same time, consumers continue to demonstrate a preference for Wii consoles, which offer tremendous value, whether measured in fun games, shared experiences or the suggested retail price of just $199.99.

To enable their systems to stream content from Netflix, Wii owners will need a Netflix instant-streaming disc for the Wii console, which will be available at no additional cost to Netflix subscribers. The free disc looks and operates the same as a disc-based Wii game, and the entire user experience will feel natural and intuitive to Wii console owners. Netflix members and Wii console owners can now reserve a free instant-streaming disc by going to www.netflix.com/Wii. Once available in the spring, the discs will be delivered for free by first-class mail.

When the instant-streaming disc is inserted into a member’s Wii system, an array of movie and TV choices will be displayed right on their TV screen. These titles will be conveniently organized into a variety of categories based on members’ personal preferences and will include popular genres, new arrivals and members’ individual instant Queues. Using the Wii Remote controller, members will be able to choose a movie or TV episode to watch from their instant Queues or pick one directly from any of the lists. They wil

Wii has difficulty with streaming

[slim]

I don't know whether I've just got one from a bad batch, but my Wii is terrible at streaming Flash video in its browser. Both BBC iPlayer and YouTube stop frequently to buffer.

I guess it could be lack of memory to buffer in. Or it could be a bad WiFi connection -- it's close to the AP and other nearby devices do fine.

I'd be mightily upset if I got this sort of performance on video that I'd paid for.

Re:Wii has difficulty with streaming

[captjc]

No, the Wii just sucks for streaming video. I guess it is something about a crappy wifi card and too little memory.

Re:Wii has difficulty with streaming

[h4rr4r]

Streaming video is very susceptible to the problems that plague wifi, especially temporary signal loss. If you want to stream video go buy some cat 6 and run it through the wall. Yes you can even do that in an apartment, I do.

Aw.

[Spyware23]

Cool, even more content restricted to geographical boundaries.

BDJ

[FatherOfONe]

The reason the PS3 currently uses a disc is that the entire netflix program is written in Java. Specifically a BDJ. So the PS3 treats this disc as a Blue-Ray movie and runs their Java program as any Blue-Ray player is required to do. It really doesn't use any specific PS3 only code. They are working on a version that won't require the disc and will hopefully have it out soon (this year). I would "guess" it might be possible to take the PS3 disc and put it in to some modern BlueRay player and get it to work.

In my opinion this is pretty impressive what they have done with BDJ, and it shows what it is capable of. It also shows exactly why Microsoft didn't want this as a standard.

Re:BDJ

[PRMan]

If this were true, then it would work in ANY Blu-Ray player hooked up to a network cable. Can anyone confirm this?

Re:BDJ

[CronoCloud]

Whether it works or not It might depend on how powerful the CPU is in the standalone BD player is. The PS3 has very very good BD-J perfromance.

Good

[Cornwallis]

grief! You've really spoiled my day.

I'm still waiting for Hulu support

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean for the PS3, Xbox360 and Wii. I tried watching Hulu on my PS3 and it wouldn't play. (And I'd rather watch TV on my TV than my computer. Oh, and I have a remote for the PS3 which further makes me want to watch hulu on my PS3.)

Re:I'm still waiting for Hulu support

[atari2600]

Get Playon for your PC. Watch Hulu on PS3. Works like a fucking charm.

Re:I'm still waiting for Hulu support

[CronoCloud]

Hulu used to work, but then the media companies found out that people were watching Hulu on PS3's connected to TV's and their agreements for streaming rights were for computers connected to monitors. Silly, I know, but the media companies view the living room and the desk as separate markets.

Sony ought to add an option to the web browser to change the User Agent, because that's how their blocking PS3's.

Re:I'm still waiting for Hulu support

[Osty]

Sony ought to add an option to the web browser to change the User Agent, because that's how their blocking PS3's.

Or you could run your PS3 through a proxy that strips the UA.

I prefer quality over convenience.

[FatSean]

I didn't buy an expensive 1080p TV and 5.1 surround sound system to watch overly-compressed mish-mash! Most of my friends are the same.

Already streaming NetFlix to my Wii

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this an issue? http://www.playon.tv/

I had mine setup in fifteen minutes and was streaming Netflix to my Wii and displaying it on my 1080p HDTV. Video quality was lower than DVD, due to transcoding to FLV. I did experience some buffering issues but that I attribute to using an ancient CPU (an old Athlon) on the transcoding host and trying to pull it down through a 1.5mpbs basic DSL link.

Since I'm using it to watch old movies with the kids, my expectations on picture quality are not above the Wii capabilities.

If you care that much about picture quality, I cant say I sympathize with whining about having absolutely no other options than streaming through your Wii.
e.g. hook up your laptop (with a proper graphics display card that can send the right RGB signaling) and send the display to your TV.

Or look into PlayOn. Or some other dedicated solution to get the video quality you desire to your TV.

Re:Already streaming NetFlix to my Wii

[slim]

+1

I'd say if you're happy with SD, a hacked Xbox (original) running XBMC is the best TV compatible media player money can buy -- even though it would cost you around $50.

Pay more for something with the oomph to decode HD. Personally I don't care enough about HD to do that.

oh great!

[kellyb9]

... Now I have one more thing to use my Wii for other than playing the three decent Mario/Zelda games that get released every single year.

Can't Wait

[TheAbMan]

This would be awesome. I was wondering why I couldn't watch Netflix movies on my Wii.

Bannerbomb + USB Loader

[dark_requiem]

Easy way around this: use bannerbomb to install the homebrew channel, then install a cIOS, then install a USB Loader. Rip the Netflix disc to your USB hard drive, and you can load it from the drive (along with all your game backups). Works like a charm for everything else, takes no more time to load than any other channel.

re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they require a disc to see how many people actually order them and then they can move on with the next logical step to see if it's worth putting time and money into rewriting or implementing it into their firmware(s). Stop bitching about the Wii's storage space as if it's an issue. I have mplayer on my wii and it happily streams HD content and the like right across my network, with wifi. :-p but with that aside..i'm sure if enough people are interested in the netflix disc they will add an application download. This is netflix offering a service here, not Sony or Nintendo, yet.