Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Netflix Streaming Arrives For the Wii

Posted by Soulskill on from the hopping-on-the-bandwagon dept.

Grant,thompson writes "As announced in January and mentioned here on Slashdot, Netflix is sending out discs today to enable streaming on the Nintendo Wii. 'Netflix has sent out emails to customers who pre-ordered the Wii's instant streaming disc, indicating that the disc will arrive in mailboxes tomorrow, and that the service will likely start within the next day.'"

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Not to sounds like a video snob ... by jsnipy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But without any hope of HD, whats the point?

    --
    -- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
    1. Re:Not to sounds like a video snob ... by Goblez · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Now my kids can watch their Cartoons downstairs while I stream HD on my XBox upstairs. Sounds like a win for me.

      --
      - Kal`Goblez
    2. Re:Not to sounds like a video snob ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      But without any hope of HD, whats the point?

      Guess what? Lots of people don't own HDTVs, but like to watch movies and already own a Wii.

    3. Re:Not to sounds like a video snob ... by Shatrat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Once you lose enough signal that you can no longer decode the digital data, your video becomes instantly unwatchable.

      While we're nitpicking, this isn't necessarily true. There is such a thing as Bit Error Rate and you can have some in a digital signal and still have a usable signal. It might not even be noticeable. If a 24 bit color is off by the least significant bit for one frame on one pixel would you see it? It's an oversimplified example really, but I hope you get my point. On the other hand, a little bit of nasty on an OC192 can drop every cell call in 100 miles.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  2. You need a disc? by Sparkycat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I gather that you need to load the netflix disc every time you want to stream stream something?

    On my 360 (and I assume on PS3s as well), netflix streaming is built into the software of the device: I can play a game off of a disc until my wife gets home, then switch over to netflix and watch some tv with a few button clicks.

    If you have to get up and fumble with discs every time you want to switch tasks, this is a big Fail for the Wii in terms of convenience. Why not a WiiWare application?

  3. Re:Netflix streaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    My hard-of-hearing wife is still waiting for closed captions. I'm wondering if a class action discrimination lawsuit would help. Hulu has had captions for years, and Youtube is even beginning to support them, even though their content is completely user-submitted. It's really frustrating, because it's a neat service and she can't enjoy it at all because of this one missing feature--which means I can't either. We've had to stick to DVDs, which is kind of a shame.