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All Star Trek TV Coming To Netflix
tekgoblin writes "This is great news for all the Star Trek fans out there. Starting in July, every episode from every Star Trek series will be available for Instant Watch over Netflix. Right now Star Trek TOS is available for Instant Watch, and the movies, but that's all. Soon it will all be here for our viewing pleasure."
Made my day hearing this!
But not available for instant streaming tailored to your connection's bitrate.
I'd rather stream it via netflix legally (which I already pay for), rather than hoard it illegally on a drive I then have to buy and maintain.
moox. for a new generation.
Yep, it is. Exactly how officially however...
allstepisodes.com
Cheers,
Ian
Serious question: Do you have it working on your phone or tablet? Can you hit it from computers outside of our network, like from work?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's a highly subjective opinion.
My personal ranking is:
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
TOS is a series that was originally meant to be more like the Twilight Zone, different characters each episode. It still keeps the characters from having a ongoing story. There is no story arc spanning episodes although the book versions do tie the episodes together. The stories themselves are close to Sci-Fi in that they explore the now by just slightly changing the now to make us re-examine the facts. Simple example: Rather then examine black vs white race issues, the race issue is shown by two people who are both black and white, just different sides. To "us" there is no difference to them there is. This shows just how silly race differences are.
TNG most hated change was the kid. For some reason TV must have a kid in it and people hate kids and Wheaton was the most hated of them all. Wonder what ever happened to him. The characters also become more like the crew of the Love Boat, in that they had from the beginning long established relationships, parent-child, ex-lovers. The difference is clear in that TOS never had an episode aimed purely at introducing the cast. TNG did it and needed two episodes.
It also did something else, the most powerful most capable characters, were white humans. Spock from TOS was gone, replaced why a white android and various white male humans. It lacked the edge. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe a token black woman on the bridge was no longer needed to show a society that had moved beyond racism. Maybe.
Finally, the approaches of the crew were stellar opposites. TNG was all about endless meetings. Crisis, Enterprise about to be blown up in ten seconds, MEETING time! Kirk would bust some balls, Picard would listen to suggestions. It seemed all a bit eighties to me.
DS9 was a radical departure, first off, the kid again, two this time... don't they learn? They ditched the enterprise and sayed a big Hello to story arcs... it was a soap in space. And where as Kirk always tried to do the right thing, DS9 firmly brought in politics especially US politics of screwing your allies any time you can. They didn't think anything of betraying their allies if it suited them at that moment only to suck up to them next time. This wasn't the brave new world, it wasn't Kirk either kicking ass OR accepting that humans didn't always get it right BUT willing to learn. This was Senate Hill in space.
Voyager went back into space but dumped all sense of ethics at the spaceport. Kirk would never have stood for it. Janeway did anything to get home, including mass genocide. Star Trek, how far can you fall.
Enterprise... well that answered that question didn't it. The opening trailer showed only US spacecraft. TOS had russians, blacks, aliens in the same crew. Enterprise, USA all the way.
Perhaps it is important to remember that each series reflected its time. TOS was a by product of the hippy era and Gene Roddenberry had created a story where the future was bright. Racism, hunger, war. These things had been overcome and now we could get on with the fun stuff. Exploring new worlds.
The other series were as much a product of their time. The "management is everything" culture of the eighties. The "US is right and we don't need the rest of the world" of later years.
Each series stand on its own and frankly I don't think any true fan of one can possibly like all the others. Personally, my favorite is still TOS (although to be honest, more the books then the TV show) I can stomach some TNG (the ones without wesley) and the rest. Just no thanks. Didn't bother with the reboot. It might be good, it might not be but I think it is not... the ones I heard whosaid they liked it also seem to like the later tv-shows. Fine for them but then it ain't aimed at me.
One franchise, so many different audiences. Kind of amazing if you think about it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Great news if you live in a part of the world where netflix is available. Attention /. editors, the tubes are global and so are your readers.
A. The US is not small.
B. We get stories about your lovely CCTV system.
C. It's only THIS year that the US will have parity with the UK when airing Doctor Who.
Git.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, not every story on Slashdot, or on any site, needs to concern the entire world. In particular Slashdot is a US site and the US has a significant Internet using audience, so US related stories are of interest.
It in no way harms you to have some US news on the site. Indeed if it bothered you that much, I wouldn't think you'd come here. Slashdot has many US centric or US only stories.
Personally I think you are just being bitter because Netflix is a toy you can't have. Here's a hint: This is not Slashdot's fault, and not even Netflix's. It is the fault of your law makers and the media industry. Netflix would love to expand everywhere as that is just more money for them. They have expanded to Canada recently, but it is still problematic. They wanted to expand to the UK in 2004, but all the red tape stopped that.
If you want Netflix, let your politicians know that they need to stop with allowing the media companies so much control over distribution.
However don't cry that the US has it.
> Not sure what netflix has over my NAS
1) It's legal.
2) The studios that produced the shows get some revenue which correlates to the level of interest people have in Star Trek, which encourages them to produce more material.
3) Netflix gets some revenue, which correlates to the level of interest people have in Star Trek and encourages them to continue providing Star Trek and maybe other sci-fi series.
4) The actors who worked on the series get some money via residuals, making Star Trek seem like a decent career move for other actors.
5) Paying $8 a month isn't a hardship and you're contributing to our culture by paying those who produce our entertainment rather than leeching and not giving back for what you receive.
Seriously: I have my collection of stuff at home available from wherever, however, via Subsonic.
It works well enough for pocket-sized video (and works great for audio), and it's free. I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs the other day with this using 3G connection on my Droid
That said, I also pay for Netflix, and my family watches a ton of streaming stuff that I myself would never bother with putting on the network.
Comparing a bunch of local storage (even if you can get to it remotely) to Netflix is like comparing a large, populated bookshelf at home with the local library. Neither is going to have everything you might ever want, and they serve rather different purposes.
Kid-proof tablet..
If you don't already have all the box sets, figurines and toy communicators then you're not worthy to be on slashdot.
Unfortunately, as a Linux user, I am not allowed to stream Netflix because of their (or the studios) rampant paranoia. So I am not a Netflix customer. I guess having less customers is better than someone maybe copying the stream.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Yeah, I think that Netflix streaming is the first commercial video service which is better and more convenient than piracy. Because let's face it, piracy is pretty darn convenient, and if you invest a minimal effort, the quality is also pretty good. For now, piracy still wins on the amount of content available, but I'm glad to see that Netflix is catching up!
Sums it up nicely. For years we've been complaining that we'd gladly pay a reasonable fee for unlimited streaming, and not only does Netflix finally deliver that, it does it on more internet-enabled devices than any other provider.
I wasn't blaming Microsoft, I was blaming Netflix, and the various copyright holders that control them. Your own Roku example illustrates that there's no technical limitation to streaming on Linux (Roku, IIRC, runs Linux). I already have a nice HTPC running Linux. As you point out, I could by another piece of hardware to enable me to spend more money to subscribe to Netflix, but frankly, it's just not worth it to me. If someone expects me to be their customer, they should treat me like a customer, not like a pariah.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
I'd put Voyager at the bottom, personally. It had cheese factor ten. For its time it is by far the cheesiest. TNG at the top; most successful implementation of the original formula, and the best talent by far. (Nimoy is still my favorite Trek actor, but taken as a whole...) I thought Enterprise was better than most people thought it was. I guess Nazi aliens don't bother me so much when we STILL have plenty of real Nazis running around on this mudball. Shit, the Bush family fortune came from funding the Nazis and everyone knows it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wonder if we are in store for HD versions of the episodes? I've heard that atleast with TNG the scenes with cgi were rendered in standard def. 35mm for the character scenes which is do-able.
No, AFAIK the special effects on TNG were mastered on video. The majority of the show was shot on film, but transferred to video for editing and the addition of most special effects.
This means that even if the original high-resolution source film remains intact, any "HD" transfer of TNG would still have to redo the effects since even the "originals" only ever existed as SD video- AFAIK there aren't (and never were) any higher quality versions.
Given the craptastic quality of 80s NTSC video, there's no way you could "clean" or upscale them so that they looked like anything approaching HD- they even looked crap at SD (*)- and more importantly so that they didn't stand out like a sore thumb against the higher quality rescanned film footage.
I'd think that most of these scenes the effects could be redone by someone in their basement compared to 1987. It is star trek they should let the fans add the effects back in. They would do it for free to get their name in the credits.
That sounds nice, and I'm sure that there are many skilled fans who'd do it for free. However, I suspect it's not as simple or "free lunch" for the studios as that.
For one, there's coordinating such efforts, ensuring that (e.g.) the style of effects being done by different teams have a consistent (and not jarringly different) style.
And if people are working for free, how far will they accept being told what and how to do things by the studio? What if their personal fanboy view of how things should be done or what should be concentrated on disagrees with that of the studio? (No, what hardcore fanboys want and think should be done with a show isn't always the best from a general audience point of view- indeed, pandering to the self-indulgences of obsessives can sometimes damage the general appeal of a show and destroy what made it great in the first place).
And will such people be working in their spare time? What if the studio needs X done for release in 18 months time, but some guy working in a particular area can't spare the time from work? Of course, they could pay him... which starts to blur the line between employees and free contributions anyway.
So it's not as simple as you might think.
(*) I always used to wonder why the likes of TNG looked so "soft" and generally bad- the same problems that I could see with US-based video shows- when earlier US film-based shows looked okay. Turns out that the older shows were shot and edited on film, but that at some point during the 80s there was a trend towards shooting on film but transferring to video for editing. Apparently, the BBC etc. used their own film-based prints of older shows, which obviously wouldn't have suffered from NTSC video's defects, but they clearly couldn't do this with video-edited shows. And believe me, even watching TNG on a bog-standard moderately-sized colour television set in the UK, the difference in quality was obvious.
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I have a Linux HTPC because it was the easiest to get to work with what I wanted *and* I didn't see a compelling reason to pay Microsoft a license fee when my primary use is *easier* in linux. I could buy more devices, but you know, I like my home theater to be straightforward and the more devices I am forced to buy the more that goal diminishes. I have one HDMI port, that has my HTPC connected. If I wanted another HDMI device, I'd have to upgrade my TV, stereo, or buy an HDMI switcher. Depending on what happens, I may need more button presses on more remotes to change between what I'm doing.
This isn't particularly being anti-Microsoft, it's being for a straightforward experience that doesn't require a box for every little thing I want to do.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Oh please, that's quite possibly the lamest excuse in this day and age. 2006 called, they want their lame Micro$haft excuses back.
Seems to me the GP wouldn't use Netflix unless it supported his chosen format. How is this an excuse? A person doesn't need an "excuse" to not subscribe to Netflix, they needn't buy extra hardware to please others,
So anyway, he explained his reasoning. This is a discussion, after all. People state opinions, explain their rationale . . .
Get over yourself, and look in to getting that penguin tattoo removed from your ass.
And other slashdotters make rude comments like this. It's not clever, it's just mean-spirited.
I also don't want to use Netflix because I use Linux. And I use Linux to make my father-in-law not want to visit because he can't use my computer to stream his Netflix. And of course for emacs.
I am not a crackpot.
Hardware isn't the problem, you could build a hundred boxes and if you load them all with Linux, you won't accomplish anything. Or you can run a VM with Windows, IE and Silverlight like the FAQ of your HTPC software suggests.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
No, it really is unlimited. If your ISP caps you, that isn't Netflix's fault.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
There's nothing wrong with a deep and complicated story, but the problem with DS9 is that they completely botched the execution of the premise. I would have loved to see a series focusing on the reconstruction of Bajor. No dominion, no wormhole, no Chosen One junk, no hostile shapeshifters, no screw-TNG-continuity-let's-go-to-war-with-the-Klingons crap, and no technobabble.
Take some ambivalent Federation prime-directive fans and mostly-peaceful isolationist Bajorans who both want the Federation far away from Bajor, some cheerful and enthusiastic Federation and Bajoran goodie-goodies who get along well and want to work together for a better future, and some bitter screw-the-ungrateful-violent-hicks Federation crew and militant kill-the-foreign-infidel Bajorans who despise each other for various reasons.
Keep the station in orbit above Bajor to make visits to and from the planet more common, and have more scenes on Bajor showing what problems they had and what was being done to fix them. Show more of Bajor's cities, towns, and villages; show the ordinary people on the ground. Show the tension between traders, diplomats, priests, politicians, veterans. Show the differences between the provinces. Make it the story of one world of no importance to the galaxy, but make it a deep one with fleshed-out characters. Don't be afraid to permanently replace major characters. Make the climax of the series to be admission of Bajor to the Federation.
And above all, less Starfleet! DS9 was the perfect chance to show how the civilian side of the Federation works. Maybe have some of Starfleet's equivalent of the US Army Corps of Engineers, a handful of security officers, and maybe a liason to Starfleet, but that should have been it. Make the person in charge a civilian Federation official, someone with a well-rounded view of Bajor's politics and economics. Throw in the odd patrolling-starship-visits episode for variety if you really must have your Starfleet fix.
DS9 FTW, mainly because it didn't rely on made-up-on-the-spot fake science or holodeck claptrap to drive/resolve the storylines.
All of Star Trek relies on fake, made-up science. Warp drive, travelling through worm holes populated by gods?
The important aspect of good Trek is that it explores/confronts human/societal problems/issues. If that's done as a murder-mystery in a holodeck setting or a non-space set in a hut on a planet, that's not really a failing. Sci-Fi tricks its readers/viewers into dealing with these matters with the lure of science.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)