Netflix Extends "Watch Instantly" To Mac Users 205
CNet is reporting that Netflix has opened up its "Watch Instantly" feature to Mac users (here is Netflix's blog entry). They accomplished this by using Microsoft's Silverlight technology on both platforms, abandoning the Windows Media Player solution that had been employed in the first, Windows-only, version. Silverlight's DRM capabilities meet Netflix's needs, apparently. Netflix warns that this is beta software. Mac users can opt in here, then watch instantly with Safari or Firefox 2+, with the Silverlight plugin in place. Movie selection is somewhat limited.
Firefox FTW (Score:1, Informative)
"Movie Selection is Limited"? (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I can tell, the beta allows access to the full instant watch selection that IE users would see. The player loads and buffers much quicker than the player in IE7- allowing for much faster skipping forwards and backwards on the old P-IV in my living room. The performance difference is fairly pronounced on my relatively new laptop. Under Firefox it is consistently 15 seconds from clicking "play" while browsing instant-watch to the actual start of the video. In IE7 it will take between 30 seconds 45 seconds. Video quality is indistinguishable in terms of clarity, but I noticed much less stuttering in the silverlight player.
On the old pentium IV machine in my livingroom, the time to play drops from about 1 minute to 25 seconds. While this is half the time, it was never a big deal when compared to the convenience. What is a big deal is the impressive drop in stuttering compared to the player in IE7. On my dinosaur of a living room computer, the video for all netflix movies would stutter every few seconds or so until the movie was fully buffered. In the silverlight player, there is no noticeable stuttering.
I did this totally subjective, non-scientific, arbitrary, and slightly drunk comparison on the following two machines:
Older-than-dirt desktop-
-2.4 GHz Pentium IV
-1GB DDR 333 RAM
-Windows XP Home SP3
-Ati Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB VRAM)
Slightly Newer Laptop-
-2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-Windows XP Pro SP3
-Ati Radeon Mobility x1400 (god awful)
Re:Firefox FTW (Score:4, Informative)
Comparing IE7 and Silverlight players, cont. (Score:4, Informative)
The Silverlight player does not require nearly as much free space as the IE7/WMP player for the "high quality" video to play. I've checked and the library is the same as that availible for the PC as far as the 182 items in my instant queue go.
While that doesn't cover the thousands upon thousands of items they stream, it does cover a wide range of properties. So far as I can tell, the Starz! content, the CBS current series content, the NBC current series content, and all the showtime content is still there. Other than that, well who cares if "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians" isn't availible in Firefox. Oh wait, it looks like it is.
Re:Still not open availability? (Score:4, Informative)
It's opt-in. Go here: http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin [netflix.com]
Re:hilarious (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think it is NetFlix's choice to adopt Silverlight. They released a press release to their Mac users before, stating that it is the movie companies (probably MPAA) stipulated which DRM they can use. But, true to their word, they finally are opening Watch Instantly to Mac users. Lets hope that the Linux port of Silverlight gets thrown in the mix too.
I know Microsoft products are unpopular, but sadly, the adage "No one ever got fired for buying (trusting) Microsoft" probably applies here.
Re:hilarious (Score:3, Informative)
Besides, have you heard about Autodesk Smoke [autodesk.com]? That's a complete Linux-based online video editing suite.
Reason #1 this is useless to me (Score:3, Informative)
arrghh
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Informative)
There are video CODECs written in Smalltalk running on Squeak. I was at a presentation by Alan Kay a couple of years ago where he gave the entire presentation from within Squeak, including video. Squeak isn't a particularly fast implementation of Smalltalk - it's a bytecode interpreter with no JIT capabilities. A modern JavaScript environment should be faster.
The main reason JavaScript would be slow for writing a video CODEC is that it only has one kind of numerical object, a double-precision float. Implementations try to work around this, but it's not always possible.
Re:Firefox FTW (Score:4, Informative)
Noooo. He means he installed the Silverlight plugin and is watching it natively in Firefox. Y'know, basically what this whole article is about.
Re:DRM pushes Silverlight (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reasons to hate Silverlight? (Score:4, Informative)
Flash on the otherhand is much more open.