crowtango

As I’m sure most of the world is aware, Netflix now offers unlimited streaming of some of it’s movie and television library. This new addition to their subscription service was apparently enough for me to sign up and start giving away another $9 a month. I had a chance to spend a couple of hours with the service and here are my initial thoughts on it.

First of all there is a little install process that must be done prior to enjoying your video content. This would appear to be a trivial task but, as with most things in my life, it didn’t work for me the first time around.

I tried installing the plug-in on a freshly installed and fully updated version of Vista Home Premium and was informed in my Explorer 7 browser that Windows DRM services were not working properly, and that there was a piece of software I could use to reset them. I ran the software which informed me that it had failed to reset my DRM services. “No big deal” I think, “I’ll just restart my computer, that will surely fix this little software misunderstanding.” This however was not the case.

After restarting my computer was plagued with warnings of digital tuners not being found and cable box software not running properly. This is all new to me, I don’t even have a digital cable or a box for that matter. I finally clear all the warning and reopen Explorer to enjoy some streaming goodness. “No sir, you will not!” says IE 7, every time I tried to play a movie the browser would crash.

At this point I figure it can’t hurt to give tech support a call, since I can’t find a link for the plugin on the Netflix site–so I can attempt to reinstall it. Unfortunately my tech lady couldn’t help me and gave me the hours and phone number of someone who could. I never called, I just started browsing the site and adding movies to my queue.

After a half hour of taking in what Netflix had to offer, my better half woke up to get ready for work, allowing me access to the other Vista PC in the house. I ran through the process again on this computer and had no problems whatsoever. The explanation I can find for my initial complications would to be that I had two tabs open, with Netflix in each. I believe this may have hung up the installation process part of the way threw hindered its’ completion (just a thought).

At last I’m ready to start streaming, and now from the comfort of my bed. I navigate to the instant play portion of the site and click play on the first thing I see “Pan’s Labyrinth” and seconds later it starts to play…then it stops. “What the shit,” I say ” this sucks sack!” I pause the stream hoping it may catch up, but it never does. I decided to give a little 30 Rock a shot and in seconds it starts up and away it goes, never skipping or showing any signs of lag.

After the pilot of 30 Rock I moved on to something a bit more demanding, a full length, 16:9 movie: Nightwatch. I press play and again it starts with little delay and never spits or stutters. I’ve heard people say the quality isn’t that great–and compared to HD I’d have to agree–but I think it looks better then a DVD played threw a PlayStation 2 (that’s good enough for me).

Even after all my installation hick-ups I think this service is great! The only thing that really disappointed me was the lack of a Media Center interface. I had heard Leo Laporte say something about watching Netflix streams from Media Center on TWIT this week, and kind of thought that was how it worked. This does not appear to be the case. It seems that the instant view service only works in Explorer which makes navigation a bit of a pain, and near impossible with a Media Center remote. Fortunate for me, I’ve a Gyration Media Center remote that acts as a mouse (much like a Wiimote) as well as a universal remote.

If Netflix moves this service into the Media Center, like Vongo and Movielink have, I believe they have a chance to corner the streaming movie market. Until then I see it as a bonus to an already great movie rental service.

We took a little time off for the holidays, but now we’re back for the new year. This is the longest podcast to date, and it has a bit more experimentation then usual.

 
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