Slashdot Mirror
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.
Go go http://www.netflix.com/InstantStreamingDisc?device=Wii to reserve a disc.
...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.
Living With a Nerd
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.
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 :-)
Living With a Nerd
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.
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.
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).
We have the best government that money can buy.