Netflix wants service on your console

by Alexander Sliwinski on Oct 25th 2007 12:56PM

In a conference call with analysts, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings brought up the idea of enabling the service through "internet connected game consoles." That was one of numerous options proposed. Currently Netflix only offers movie rentals by mail or PC streaming, but it's been no secret that Netflix has been seeking to connect with a company that has an internet enabled box attached to a television in the home. The obvious contenders for this service in the game space would be the PS3 and the Xbox 360 -- and that's where things get interesting if we look back a few months.

Back in March, Hastings joined the board of Microsoft. Considering Xbox Live already has an amazing infrastructure set up, the real question becomes: How difficult would it be to implement Netflix service on it? Even if the movie takes a day to download, it's still better than mail for those with a modicum of patience. Netflix revolutionized the way we rent movies, could it revolutionize the way non-gamers in the household view the Xbox 360 (or PS3)?

[Via Gamasutra]

Source

Tags: movies, netflix, PS3, psn, xbm, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (58)

Yes please

sign em up. the way i see it, microsoft would definitely do something like this. they like partnerships with content providers. look at windows media player and all the sub stores it connects to. xbox marketplace could easily have a content section for netflix, tied to your gamertag / live id where movies can be ordered with an account taken off ms points or through the regular netflix subscription

Where do I sign?

This needs to happen.

Better be in HD. $2 for HD movies, $1 for SD movies and I'll never look back at any rental option again. Ever.

With all due respect, the point of Netflix is to eliminate microtransactions like this. It *should* work in the "All You Can Eat For A Monthly Fee" model.

This would be key to my purchasing an Xbox or PS3

Hell yeah. Certainly an impetus, isn't it?

This would be another push for me to maybe get one too, I've just got a Wii right now but every once in a while I eye the xbox...

The instant viewing on your PC isn't really downloading, you're streaming it. It works fairly well and I've watched alot of movies off of Netflix with no pausing or stuttering in the video.

When you stream it is downloaded, for it to work on the Wii it would have to discard the stream after it was watched, so now rewinding.

Sony would probably reject it cause it would mean less Blu-Ray disc sales. :D

you sure are out of the loop (aka wii'd) seeing as netflix has been renting movies in the Blu-ray format for quite some time now

@ required

Netflix letting people rent Blu-Ray is good for Sony and Blu-Ray. Netflix giving the download/streaming option over Blu-Ray is bad for Sony and Blu-Ray.

Cellien said that Sony would refuse because of it, not that Netflix didn't support Sony.

Flat rental rate per month for unlimited movie downloads. That's what I hope for anyway ...

Netflix already has an excellent "instant view" on your PC right now. I was really quite amazed at the quality the offered, the only downside I can see being you can't turn on subtitles or switch language tracks (as far as I could tell).

So all I want for Christmas is for Sony and/or Microsoft to have a client that enables this service on the PS3/360. Then I wouldn't have to hook my laptop up to the TV.

For those of you who have netflix but have never tried the "watch it now" feature, you really should. I prefer to have a DVD in hand (for the extras) but on those days you find yourself with all movies being in the mail somewhere, it's a great substitute.

Plus they don't count the number of movies, just how much time you watch, and for free you can watch the same number of hours as your monthly fee. So if you pay $16 a month for regular service, you get 16 hours of watch it now, totally free. Try it!

This shouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, but the problems I see are this:

1) How long are you going to be able to "rent" the movie for? Netflix's primary advantage over Blockbuster is that you can hold the movie indefinitely. (And Blockbuster moved to counter that.)

2) Hastings is on board with the 360, but honestly, the best place for this service would be the PS3. (Whoa there, don't just dismiss this out of hand, listen up.) The fact that you can hook your PSP up to the PS3 and download content makes this awesome. UMDs suck, that's certified fact. But renting a movie on your PS3 and then downloading it onto the PSP so you could watch it portably without having to pay more than the cost of the DVD would be sweet.

3) What's this going to cost? This ties in with point 1, but I'm not going to want to rent a movie if I can own it for not significantly more.

4) Will I get Achievement points for renting movies? (Achievement Unlocked 100 G - Watched all three Lord of the Rings movies without pausing.)

It could be argued that the Xbox 360 would be just as good as you could transfer the downloaded video to any connected media player, including Microsoft's own Zune.

It is a great idea either way, though.

The transferring is a moot point, thats why production companies like the 360 rental service so much, their movies are locked in on it, virtually no chance its re encoded and kept forever, the Zune is a locked platform (ignoring hacks) so they might allow transfer to those. The current watch it now movies for netflix are wmv, so thats another plus for the 360.

I have a cappy old PC connected to my TV for this purpose already. Its a good service. You get the same hours a month download as dollars you pay for their mail service.

I don't see why Netflix doesn't just modify it's "Watch It Now" feature to work with the Wii's Opera browser. It seems like the easiest way to combine the world of gaming and the world of movie-watching without unnecessary fees and hardware components. Plus, this might actually make up for the Wii's lack of DVD playback ability.

Not going to happen on the Wii buddy.

The only technical reason this can't happen with the Wii right now is because of DRM.

As we all know, the Wii is more than capable of decoding DVD-quality MPEG-2 streams, and DVD-quality streams are the type netflix currently offers with 'watch it now.'

However, netflix's watch it now feature only works when you're using Windows Media Player DRM. This means it's unlikely to happen on the Wii even though the Wii is a perfect candidate: Netflix provides 480p widescreen content that could /easily/ be decoded with the current cpu power of the Wii.

Have you tried TVersity or Orb with the Wii? Streaming video doesn't work. As much as I like my Wii, it's not made for that kind of thing.

Unlike the film and music industries, in which content can be driven direct through non proprietary mediums, the gaming harware developers will never allow this.

The only way this occurs is if the third party developers go to Netflix vis exclusive deal. Even then, that third party developer would have to be willing to cut themselves heavily or give % of profit in order to bypass the big 3. MS, Sony and Nintendo are far too smart now, after witnessing the explosiveness and volatility of the online film and music markets, to ever let the games for their console out to another party when they can make it themselves through Home, XB Live, and VC. And the reason why gaming content download will not be a viable option for another 10 years (just like how it was proposed to be the death of hard gaming media 10 years ago) is because unlike the music and film industries, which work in a finite format (120 minute movie, 60 minute album) gaming only gets bigger in complexity. The margins are also much higher by charging for digital content download. This is why you are playing simple games and games from 1992 on your console.

This is a simple case of Netflix lifting their skirt to see if anyone wants to look underneath.

Also, my response is a preemptive one vs. people who believe netflix is going to rent games online through download. This will save us the 10 replies that you normally would have seen here.

You cannot download Netflix movies. Their on-demand service is streamed. And it's all less than standard def. It currently only supports windows PCs with internet explorer. It is relatively trivial for them to open this up to consoles (even the Wii). And personally, I think they're stupid for not allowing this already. All that they'll need to do is open their streaming videos on demand to other browsers. They just typically require you to install a little file which prevents you from ripping the streamed movie (free download via Wii Shop Channel, anyone?). Trust me, this is no selling point for a console.

And when I say "they" are stupid for not doing this already, I mean Netflix is stupid. The console makers have nothing to do with this, really. As long as there's a web browser on the system that can support streaming media, there's no reason why it shouldn't play. Netflix just needs to open it up a little. BTW, it's not pay per download. It's free (limited by hours of viewing time per month) for Netflix members. It'd be much better, imo, than hooking up my laptop to the TV like I've been doing.

Netflix wants service on my console eh?

A pox on them and their pay-per-month services! These very ppm fees are why I avoided WoW and am a pirate of old movies (I still go to the theater for the new ones, the hell with renting).

I want them to start renting out video games. I am getting tired of other online game sites that take a week or more to get me a new game.

Word.

The new Gamefly Pittsburgh facility has not improved their turnaround much. I'm in DC and it used to take about 7-8 days. Now the Pitt location it's down to 5-6. Pathetic compared to netflix's 2-3. I wish netflix would add games.

Ditto, we get the netflix from the Gaithersburg warehouse (i live in MD). It only takes 2 days for me. But gamefly takes forever, a week sometimes.

wait... what?

i thought consoles were for games and nobody wanted or cared about movie playback capabilities.

This would totally put HD-DVD/Blu-Gay to death. Where do I sign up?

I was just about to cancel my Netflix service because I don't use it as much as XBL Marketplace. If this were to happen, I'd not only keep my service, but I'd be willing to pay more for it! Please oh please I hope this happens!

Requirement: DVD and HD quality please :)

You do know that Xbox Live already has a similar service to this already right?

The idea is that you pay a monthly Netflix bill and you "rent" as many movies as you want during the month. Thats what makes this an exciting idea.

I'm so close to a netflix facility the turnaround is 2-3 days max from when I mail back to when the next one arrives.

I'd like to see some lower prices on movie downloads from XBLM where you have a very tiny window to watch/rewatch or have a subscription option for (un)limited downloads.

DOn't get al excited, Netflix has been pimping this idea since tivo series 2 came out. It didn't happen then, and I doubt anyone will bite now. It would be awesome to stream movies without having to wait for the mail though.

Hello... Xbox Live already has movie rentals...

But it's not subscription based like Netflix. If I rented movies a la carte, it would cost me a small fortune, as opposed to the very reasonable $18 a month I hand over to Netflix.

If they did this, I'd subscribe to Netflix in a heartbeat.

XBL's selection is narrow. Netflix would roid it up big time. I am all for it.

Next thing you know XBL will get ESPN and Bloomberg and then its all over for iTunes, cable, satellite and ...

Microsoft will ruelle ze werld!

Someone explain this to me.. Why can Comcast stream HD movies to my bigscreen yet It takes a whole day to download an HD movie from online? Both my cable TV and my Modem travel through the same cables. Are the cable companies just not allowing that much juice on the modem side?

Cable TV signal gets a much fatter allocation of the comcast pipe than your internet connection, because DTV/HDTV requires fat pipes. That also goes for switches and stuff, because cable tv is still king of home connectivity. Eventually, when internet content rivals and trumps tv, the allocations will switch.

Verizon is coming close to that with their fiber pipes because their are not originally strong in the cable, but huge in internet.

If any of these companies have half a brain, this will help sell consoles and make those involved a lot of money. I would be curious to find out what a service like this will entail.

Although I have a PS3, my guess is this will go to 360. Netflix will be or is using Microsoft's new Silverlight technology for the Instant Watch feature. Supposedly Silverlight has the ability to stream content at 720p, but when Netflix will allow HD streaming I'm not so sure. When 720p is available and on which ever platform, I will be right there.

Whatever happened to Microsoft's IPTV service they were going to have for the 360? That's what I'm waiting for, I'm tired of Comcast.

a day to download? It takes about 5 minutes to begin watching an Xbox live movie rental, and about half that for Netflix Watch Now.

Hell, yeah Netflix on my 360!!! Woohoo!!

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Netflix wants service on your console

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