Gizmodo: Watch Now

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 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!]

Easily Rip Netflix Streaming Movies To Your Hard Drive

Jason Chen — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:40:15 EST

Adam of Lifehacker found this pretty slick way of allowing Netflix users to download and save streaming movies onto their hard drives, meaning that you can take movies on the go without having to always be connected to the net. If this isn't illegal, it's most likely against the EULA; and if it isn't against the EULA, it's definitely against the spirit of Netflix's streaming movie feature. Adam had some troubles with getting this to work, but many other users say it works fine. If these downloaded movies can be streamed via Windows Media Extender to an Xbox 360, that would be crunktastic. [Lifehacker]

Netflix Online Video Becomes All-You-Eat Tomorrow; Can It Compete With iTunes Video Rentals?

matt buchanan — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:14:22 EST

We had heard that unlimited online viewing had been granted to select Netflix subscribers last month, and suspected it'd get a full rollout soon. Well, soon is tomorrow—as the AP notes, a day before MacWorld, where Apple is expected to unveil its video rental-killer rendition of iTunes.

The only people who aren't getting cut in to the infinite viewing parade are the cheapos who only rent a pair of DVDs a month for $5. Whether or not turning the stream access into a smorgasbord is enough to fend off the looming iTunes threat is doubtful—Mac-compatibility would be a nice little shot to the balls, though—but it's not like Netflix is totally without a battle plan for the infinite format war. [SF Gate/AP]

Netflix Watch Now: Secret Technique for Cutting In Line, Get Streaming Now

Charlie White — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:29:30 EST

Netflix is slowly rolling out its movie streaming feature, but some members of the movie service won't be getting this capability until June. If you're one of the unlucky Netflix users who haven't seen that Watch Now tab appear on the Netflix website yet, now there's a way you can skip waiting in line and have it right away. There's a manual method, which we also skipped, but you might want to try it:

• Log into Netflix.
• Click on "Your Account"
• Look for a small graphic on the right column that says "How can I watch movies on my PC?"
• Click the "Start Now" link, and voila, you have a new tab next to Queue.

But what worked best for us was the following one-click technique:

We just clicked this link, and the Watch Now tab appeared on the Netflix site. Suddenly, we were able to watch streaming movies on demand, included free with our Netflix membership. You get an hour of streaming movie watching per month for each dollar your membership costs.

A couple of quick realizations: the service doesn't work with Firefox, so you have to use Internet Exploder. After downloading Netflix's proprietary playback software, we clicked on the movie Amadeus, and unfortunately it was in a 4x3 aspect ratio with mediocre video quality. So far, eh. – Charlie White

Skip The Wait For Netflix Movie Streaming [uneasysilence]