Gizmodo: streaming movies

Watch Netflix's Watch Now on Unlimited Machines

Jason Chen — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Not only can you watch Netflix's Watch Now streaming movies on your HTPC and Xbox 360, you can now watch them on unlimited PCs just with a quick registry trick. The "trick", which is just copying the registry entry from a working machine onto a new one, can only be done with XP->XP or Vista->Vista, but you have three licenses to watch so that shouldn't be a problem. Now all that's left is finding something worth watching in the gimped catalog of movies Netflix offers for streaming. [Tech Recipes via Lifehacker]

Netflix Movie Streaming on Xbox 360 Actually Coming Soon?

Jason Chen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:00:00 EDT

The rumor about Netflix surveying the scene, prepping a possible streaming movie solution to Xbox 360 and PS3 seems to be on the verge of coming true, according to Netflix themselves. They just released a statement that says they've surveyed subscribers to see how interested they were in streaming movies over Xbox 360 (PS3 was not mentioned), but didn't say whether a partnership was coming between them and Microsoft.

Releasing a statement about a survey? Sounds like someone's trying to jockey a better negotiating position while talks are still underway. On a similar note, Netflix's online site seems to have been down for most of Monday, which makes the case for streaming media even stronger. [Reuters - Thanks David!]

Netflix Movie Streaming Coming to Xbox 360 and PS3?

Jason Chen — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:50:25 EST

Although surveys can pretty much ask anything (would you like to see George Wendt eating beans in a movie?), this survey from Netflix that asks whether you'd like to stream Netflix movies to your Xbox 360 seems pretty plausible to us. Here's why.

First, you have the MyNetflix plugin for Windows Vista Media Center PCs that turns the Media Center into a streaming frontend for the Netflix Watch Now interface. The developer of this app says that Media Center Extenders don't work "yet", which might mean that it's an issue with codec support (Netflix doesn't stream in the right video codec). They might even be able to fix this with a little bit of real-time video transcoding on your PC.

But what would you say if you could stream Netflix's Watch Now movies directly to your 360 at no additional charge? Would you be happy, or really happy? [Thanks Andy!]