Brad's World

Today Netflix announced their new "Instant Movie Watching" service. Beginning in June 2007, a new tab -- "Watch Now" -- will appear when you browse Netflix. The teaser page from Netflix is here. Given Netflix's ability to delight me as a customer over the years, I am very excited.


How does Netflix Instant Movie Watching work?

• You don't download the movie -- it "streams" to your PC over your internet connection. (No Macs allowed..)

How much does it cost?

• It's included with your subscription at no extra charge! The number of hours is governed however:
  

The hours available for instant watching will vary based on subscribers' monthly plans. For example, subscribers on the entry-level $5.99 plan will have six hours of online movie watching per month and subscribers on Netflix's most popular plan, $17.99 for unlimited DVD rental and three discs out at a time, will have 18 hours of online movie watching per month.

Amazon's attempt at selling streamed movies has not done well (this article notes that only 18% of Netflix's top 50 are available for streaming from Amazon unbox). I also have a streaming movie store on my Sprint PowerVision phone. I haven't tried it since it is $6-7 per movie, and the selection is very very limited. Let's hope this is the real thing. Let's hope the Netflix top 50 are watchable. Does anyone out there stream movies to their phone or PC? (I didn't think so.. for some reason its a hard pill to swallow -- paying for each time you want to watch).

The old "Rent or Buy" question is rearing its head again. In this case we're talking about the market for people who want to watch movies "on-demand" and don't mind a small screen. The iTunes Store sells movies. Why would I pay $10 to buy Zoolander or $15 for Pirates of the Carribean when Netflix may let me watch it as part of my monthly subscription?

The service is PC only. As a Mac user, this is one more thing that has me considering Parallels and Explorer 7.

The iTunes Store movie section may have just taken a big hit.