Browsing through Netflix last night, I noticed a new tab in the list of sections available for viewing. The “Watch Now” tab turns out to be a collection of videos you can watch online. No more selecting a movie, waiting for it to percolate to the top of your queue and then waiting for it to arrive in the mail, this is pretty much instant gratification.
Apparently this is something they’re rolling out to a few customers at a time. I didn’t notice anything on the site mentioning what the criteria are for them choosing to make it available; but the way this kind of thing usually works is that by the time a service becomes available to me, everyone else has had it for months or years.
For now at least this is just a free extra included in every Netflix subscription, but the fine print includes a notice that they reserve the right to charge for it eventually. It’s also not an “all-you-can-eat” arrangement, you get one hour of viewing time for every dollar in the cost of your Netflix subscription. So for example, on a plan that costs $18/month, you can watch 18 hours worth of online movies, in addition to your regular rentals.
From a technical perspective, it’s relatively painless. I don’t know the full list of supported platforms, but on Windows it requires Internet Explorer 6.0 (or later) and the Windows Media Player. When you sign up to watch your first movie, the “Netflix Movie Player” (presumably a wrapper around the Windows player) is downloaded and installed. I had to reboot to get the video to display, but my computer had already been in an “odd” state beforehand. And that’s all it took.
The video streams from Netflix’s servers, so the image quality is going to be subject to the limitations of your network connection. I have a 6MBs cable connection and the lights on my network connection flashed non-stop throughout Bill Engvall’s 72-minute performance. This probably won’t work at all for someone on a dial-up connection, but the full-screen image on my laptop was just as sharp as if I was watching a DVD.
I don’t see this replacing my Netflix DVDs any time soon (after all, my TV doesn’t have the ability to connect to the Internet). But this could be a nice addition for times when I don’t want to wait for a movie to arrive, or if I’m travelling and don’t want to haul a bunch of DVDs (or pay for a hotel’s in-room movie package).
All in all, it’s very cool.