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Netflix Gauging Interest In an iPhone App
gollum123 writes "A new survey sent out to Netflix subscribers indicates that the iPhone might be the next device that its streaming service rolls out on in the coming months. (The NY Times credits Hacking Netflix for the tip.) According to a tip sent to Hacking Netflix, the subscription video company is now asking users how likely they would be to use an iPhone app to view movies via its online streaming service. According to the survey, an iPhone app would give users all the same functionality that they have when streaming on a PC or other device, including all the same movies and TV shows without advertisements or trailers. If the app is rolled out, the ability to watch on the Apple mobile device would be offered at no additional charge to existing Netflix subscribers. There is good news for AT&T implied in the survey questions: it appears that the app would require users to be connected to a Wi-Fi network."
Screw the iPhone. This would actually make me want an iPad (and was actually the killer app I was expecting to be previewed when the iPad was demonstrated).
If you're at home, you've got a bigger screen. If you're at work, or a McDonalds/Starbucks/whatever, you probably won't be watching movies. I can see some applications for this, but not being able to use it outside a hotspot certainly hobbles it.
On the other hand, I'm sure a lot of AT&T customers won't complain, as US cellular bandwidth is already spread thin.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I know that some people really do, apparently, want to watch full length movies on tiny, tiny, tiny devices. I know that eventually these devices will have decent video out or projection capabilities. I get that I'm not the only market, and I'm totally fine with that.
But what I don't understand is... the media is really putting out the impression that everybody wants to consume TV/movies/books on miniscule screens like the iPhone. Even on an airplane I think that'd get tedious quickly. And I've seen nothing to indicate that the iPhone is competent to deliver video on that scale, even over wifi (if you're on a plane that's serving wireless movies, how busy is that wifi?). Oh well, at least Netflix has the sense to gauge how big the market is.
Can the iPhone battery even make it through 75 minutes of video + wifi?
Maybe this is all really for the iPad. That would make more sense.
I have to say as an owner of a 3GS battery life watching mp4's is amazing. I've used it on its own watching video in the car and hooked up via media cable (RCA) to my TV and both seem to play 10% battery life / hr viewing. I've watched 2 movies each about 1 1/2 - 2 hrs long and still had 50%+ left. As far as streaming goes I get about 400-600KBs average from Fido/Rogers and it's not very likely you'll be streaming anything over 420i so it shouldn't be that bad with 3G. If you're looking for a higher res video then I'm not sure how it will handle but the mp4 hardware decoding really helps out on this device(can't say the same for other iPhone models though).
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I should hope that an iPhone app would mean that the streaming would not take place over silverlight. If that's true, there's a much better chance that an app that emulates the protocol can be written for things like Linux (Including Maemo) and Android. If they could just bring back streaming over Flash (or add streaming over HTML 5), then it would be much more trivial to grant support for all these other platforms.
Ah well, I dream with fingers crossed.
Dude, both TFA and the summary point out that it is only for WiFi.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
1. Good luck finding an API or IDE that is compatible with all those platforms at once
2. Good luck finding similar functionality across all OS'es let alone all devices
3. Good luck finding the same performance across all devices
Each platform needs to be developed for separately because there's no 'gcc' or 'gtk' or 'qt' that makes anything uniform across all platforms.
Besides, almost none of the devices out in the market besides some Nokia, Apple and Android devices even have the power and the chips capable to download and play back videos AT ALL. None of the other devices (WinMo, Symbian, ...) even have standard browsers with support for Flash OR HTML5 so web developing is also out of the picture.
And the iPhone has the biggest marketshare in 1. "smartphones that you can develop for without corporate support ($$$)" or 2. "smartphones with a viable marketplace" (of course success of 2 is because of 1). Also the Maemo, Android and iPhone's are the only phones where the device is not locked down by default by the provider.
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I've converted a variety of media to be played on small screens with the thinking that it would be great for when I have travel-downtime. For me at least, it does get tedious. I just don't enjoy such a small screen. Someone else mentioned an iPad, and for me, that would probably be the tipping point (I'd think about getting one), but a cellphone screen doesn't cut it. Especially since I tend to prefer reading during downtime than watching TV.
On the airplane wi-fi front, I was on a US Air flight recently, and they had wi-fi onboard. Since it was new, they were running a promotional deal where you get one free flight's worth of wi-fi if you give them your email addy (little do they know I'm an email admin... and have virtually unlimited email addresses!). I was floored at how fast it was, considering that I was, you know, hurtling through the air at 30,000 ft. I transferred files to and from my fileserver, I had an SSH session open, and the latency didn't seem any worse than my connection at home. Impressed... but I probably still wouldn't pay for it (just as I don't pay the extra $60 for 4 more inches of legroom; the $6 Jack Daniels can easily compensate for that). Now, granted, this was all subjective-- I didn't run any speed tests-- but I was expected something like modem-speed, so I was pleasantly surprised.
How about you go 5 seconds without having mindless drivel streamed into your fucking brain?
I would if you'd post anonymously!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)