Netflix to start streaming

[Foxman]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Online movie rental service Netflix introduced a new feature Tuesday to allow customers to watch movies and television series on their personal computers and said it will make the new feature available to its subscribers in a phased rollout during the next six months.

Netflix (Charts) will continue to offer DVDs by mail to customers for a fixed monthly fee. They will have the additional option of instantly watching about 1,000 movies and television series on their PCs at no additional cost, according to the company's statement.

"While mainstream consumer adoption of online movie watching will take a number of years due to content and technology hurdles, the time is right for Netflix to take the first step," said a statement from CEO Reed Hastings. "Over the coming years we'll expand our selection of films, and we'll work to get to every Internet-connected screen, from cell phones to PCs to plasma screens. The PC screen is the best Internet-connected screen today, so we are starting there."

The company's statement said its online viewing option will not require a lengthy downloading of a large video file. Instead it says it will use real-time playback technology that allows video to be viewed at virtually the same time it is being delivered to a user's computer.

Customers using the service will have to perform a one-time installation of a browser applet that will take less than a minute. Then most subscribers' movie selections will begin playing in their Web browser in as little as 10 to 15 seconds after loading.

Movies can be paused and a position bar gives viewers the ability to jump to any point in the movie.

Internet connectivity with a minimum of one megabit per second of bandwidth is required. Faster connections are needed for better quality playback of the programming, with DVD quality possible with a three-megabit-per-second connection, according to the company.

The service will base the number of online viewing hours on a customer's plan. A client with the entry-level $5.99 a month plan will be able to watch movies online for six hours a month, while those with the full $17.99 a month plan that allows them to rent three DVDs at a time will be able to watch 18 hours a month online.

The company said most of the major and many independent studios are supporting the introduction of the new feature, including General Electric unit NBC Universal, Sony Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, which are both units of Sony (Charts), News Corp. (Charts) studio 20th Century Fox, Viacom (Charts) studio Paramount Pictures, independent studio Lionsgate as well as Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, which like CNNMoney.com are units of Time Warner (Charts).

Netflix has been competing with video rental retailer Blockbuster (Charts), which has added a online rental service to the in-store rental service.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/16/tec...sion=2007011607

that link isnt working, try this one. LINK

[Vinny]

1000 movies/TV shows seem neat, but real time? I wonder how good can it be

[aud19]

I keep trying to tell people it's coming....the MP3 generation wants downloadable, they'll eventually do to movies what they've done to music.

[Hdale85]

I think there is a large enough chunk of people that want quality content as well....the switch from VHS to DVD was based around the idea that the picture looked better. Most of this online crap is all compressed and looks like garbage and I don't think people will be to happy with that if its the main form of renting and what not. Not to mention not everyone likes to sit at their computer and watch stuff....and not that many homes have HTPC's I'm sure HTPC's will become the norm but with the 720p/1080p lcd/plasma/projectors these compressed videos are going to look even worse and people wont be happy and I know for a fact I most certainly wont be! :B Just my 2 cents

[Burke Strickland]

...and not that many homes have HTPC's I'm sure HTPC's will become the norm but with the 720p/1080p lcd/plasma/projectors these compressed videos are going to look even worse and people wont be happy and I know for a fact I most certainly wont be!

But just about everyone has a cell phone, and these compressed videos will look just fine on those -- for those who are already happy to use their cell phone as a music server. My cell phone service provider already offers both "music" downloads and streaming "video". Right now the "video" is live TV, but movies are bound to be in the pipeline soon. I put "music" and "video" in quotation marks because by my standards for those, (which I'm guessing somewhat approximate yours, which puts us in a distinctly non-mass market niche), both are laughably horrible over a cell phone, at least the ones on which I've witnessed these communication miracles. :>)

However, to most of their target market, the "quality" is just fine, and members of that broad demographic probably do not have, nor plan to have, HTPC unless it is a prepackaged desktop whose main "HT" feature is the DVR (probably set by the owner to record for the longest possible time and therefore poorest image quality) and discrete controls for playing DVDs, which they watch on their non-calibrated flat panel TV while using its speakers. If they have 720p/1080p lcd/plasma/projectors, those are probably connected with the composite cable that came with the set.

So Netflix may be on to something big for the subset of subscribers who want to maximize the use of their newly bought "home entertainment" PCs, but it may well be another class of vendor (cell phone companies) that hits it really big and makes real time streaming video as popular as, say, txt msging. I can see it now -- at the cineplex while I'm trying to watch the movie listed on the marquee over the door to the theater, a cell phone subscriber in the next row will be streaming a different movie on their cell phone, which they hold up at arms length in my line of sight like they, of course, already do with their seemingly incessant txt msging.

Burke

[Foxman]

For me the benefit will be if I want to see a TV show or series and I don't have anything to watch. For example, I am currently on Season one of the X-Files, a show I never watched for whatever reason. If I just completed one disk and want to see the next episode then I can just stream it, I can assure you the SQ and VQ of what I have seen so far isnt worth worring about.

Other than that though, I doubt I will do much streaming.

[Lex]

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, I don't want an HTPC, I do not wish to log into Winblows to watch a movie. I built one once, and it was just to big a pain in the arse to me. Dougie hit an important point, the DVD generation appreciates quality, and other than maybe sitting and watching a show at work via PC connection, or maybe business travelers and students, I see downloads as a limited market. People just want to pop a disc in, and watch.

Jason, I will fight you at every turn over this MP3 generation, that I spend money, and I am not part of the MP3 gen, except for having a few tunes on a zune. But when I Watch a movie at home, I want top quality, convenience, and ease of use.

[George Bellefontaine]

Not interested in it now and never will be. Period.

[Bmac]

One more step towards media on demand. All content should be available on demand.

[aud19]

Not interested in it now and never will be. Period.

If the quality, price and content are there, why not? :scratchhead:

You guys all seem to think that all this stuff is going to look like grainy, compressed home video on Youtube....the quality may not be HD-DVD/BD out of the gate but as it becomes more widespread and technology improves it's going to be hard to fight, particularly as the MP3 generation has more and more say on content delivery. I mean HD-DVD/BD aren't even (optimistically) expected to have 50% market by 2012 and SD DVD is still expected to have at least 33% by 2015. There's going to be an AWFUL lot of developement in dowloadable video between now and then.

It's heading towards the "Star Trek" content age :lol: You say you want to pop in a disc Doug but pretty soon you'll simply be able to tell your HT you'd like to watch "X" movie on demand and it will simply play it.. in HD...just like Star Trek :lol:

[George Bellefontaine]

If the quality, price and content are there, why not? :scratchhead:

Dunno. Maybe I'm just too old to care much. Thing is I don't even give much of a damn about all this hif-def format war crap, either. I am quite sontent watching standard dvds in my comfy HT.

[aud19]

Dunno. Maybe I'm just too old to care much. Thing is I don't even give much of a damn about all this hif-def format war crap, either. I am quite sontent watching standard dvds in my comfy HT.

Well you're not alone there George :T