Thoughts on Netflix “Watch Now”
Late last night I got rather bored and decided to investigate Netflix and their “Watch Now” feature that was announced in January. Netflix says they are slowly rolling this service out until June 2007 when every account should have it. I had a Netflix account back in 2005 but I reinstated my membership on the lowest plan ($4.99, 1 DVD at-a-time, 2 DVDs per month) to test out Watch Now.
As I had expected, my account did not have the Watch Now tab that allows me to instantly watch movies through my browser. I was about to cancel my account when I found a link to opt-in and activate instant watching. If you have an account that doesn’t have Watch Now enabled, try clicking this link [via], logging out then back in. It worked for me.
To get it running you need to be logged in with Internet Explorer and for me that meant running my Windows XP installation in Parallels on OS X. The biggest problem I had was actually finding a Watch Now-capable movie on Netflix. They are taking quite a long time converting their library to Watch Now and most movies on Watch Now were, for lack of a better word, crap.
Fortunately I found The Matrix and started watching it. First though, I had to install Netflix’s DRM component which only took a few seconds. Overall, I enjoyed the experience and found playback to be rather speedy and in good quality. Of course, the quality depends on the speed of your connection but Netflix deemed mine “high” quality. Initial buffering consumed roughly 20 seconds for me. The quality of the movie seemed on par with an actual DVD to me and like an actual DVD I was able to pause the movie and skip through it. Skipping does incur a brief buffering period if you skip to a section of the movie that hasn’t been loaded yet.
Each Netflix account receives 1 hour of Watch Now movie viewing per dollar spent per month with the membership. For example, my $4.99 membership gets me 5 hours of online viewing per month in addition to the DVDs. Your online viewing doesn’t affect your DVD limits.
What has your experience been like with Watch Now? If you don’t have a Netflix account, is this feature something that interests you? I will probably cancel my Netflix account once more until they get to the point where just about every new DVD release is available on Watch Now.
I could see myself using this if it was they had a “pay-per-view” plan instead of a subscription based plan. I would use it to watch documentaries, foreign film and shorts that only nerds like me want to watch and can’t find at a local video store. But I wouldn’t be interested in using it for big releases. It’s just not that hard to pick my a*$ up and drive 5 minutes to a video store. I actually enjoy encountering the outside world sometimes.
I don’t have a Netflix account but until recently did have the Blockbuster.com total access. I would imaging that Netflix would have to continue to improve on an added value service such as Watch Now to compete against Blockbuster’s in-store trade in benefit. It sounds like Netflix still have some improving to make on their Watch Now service but I do like the idea.
I had to use Parallels on my Mac to try it too. The quality wasn’t up to DVD quality, but not bad. I wouldn’t be impressed watching a high-level cinematography film like this, but it’s fine for many things.
It’s interesting to look at what people are watching on the Watch Now side of things. It looks like stuff people wouldn’t want their wives to find in the mail, like Poison Ivy style films.
Glad to see you got it working Paul. Movie selection is nothing to gloat about. Come on Netflix! Hurry up and get some movies up that will rival what iTunes has in its library for customers. If you do, I might up my subscription to the next tier!
Netflix simply can’t compete with Blockbuster’s in-store drop-off and free rental deal. Even with crappy quality online movies.
Kudos to Don. There really is no reason now to get a Netflix account when you can go right into a Blockbuster store, trade-in your DVD’s and also use in-store coupons for free rentals. Unless Netflix issues a price drop, which I doubt they will, I think we can see Blockbuster surpassing Netflix in the “DVD to Home” type market. While some say Netflix has a better inventory, there has only been one film that I have not been able to find on Blockbuster site and that may have had something to do with it’s rating (no, it wasn’t a porno).
I didn’t know this existing. I have a Netflix account so I gave it a shot. The performance is so much better than Joost. I have always supported Netflix over Blockbuster for my “in the mail” rentals because it was their idea! Even though Blockbuster’s in store rental movies seems to have an advantage over Netflix, this must be Netflix’s answer to the “What if we want to watch a movie now?” question.
I did not think the quality was that bad, the content is not yet up to par but there are still a few movies I would watch. Just waiting on the non-IE/OS X release.
I’ve tried it and found it to be adequate. But I agree their selection was lacking. I will still stick with my monthly subscription to Netflix just because I hate the fascist regime of Blockbuster.
Darn it, the link to get the Watch Now feature didn’t work and I kept logging in and out.
Glad to hear your impressions. It sounds like a feature that needs a little bit of work, but then it will be great!
I really like the new feature, we’ve tried it 2-3 times. My only gripes are the lack of Firefox support and the very slim movie selection so far.
Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
Netflix is awesome if you live in a rural area. Getting off my A55 to drive to blockbuster would take about as long as a movie would last! Ha!
The free online viewing sounds really great to me. In 6 months, I bet it will be a lot better. The fact that the throw free hours in seems pretty cool.
For those of use who are Firefox junkies, I have had really good luck looking at IE biased sites using the Firefox extension IEtab.
I just noticed this in our Netflix account two days ago. Today flew to another state. When I called my wife when i got home she had already watched two movies that I’d never watch and we typically only add movies to our queue that we both want to watch, or is very important to one or the other. So this worked beautifully for her since she could do it from home without going anywhere, and she didnt’ have to plan in advance for my trip to have the movies in the queue. Great work Netflix!
I live in Malibu, CA, which is supposedly a moviestar town, yet you can’t get a movie here. Our Blockbuster closed more than a year ago. I’m going to use Netflix as long as the nearest Blockbuster is a 30 to 40 minute drive through the canyon. Netflix is a Godsend for people who don’t live near civilization. But I always thought I would switch to Blockbuster if I ever live near one that’s closer. The watch now selection right now is severely lacking. Mostly obscure films or B listers. They really need to step it up and make most movies available this way for this to be something I’m going to use. Only one movie in my queue of 80 plus movies had a “play now” option.
I just discovered this feature on Netflix myself, last Friday. I am a Mac user who does NOT use Parallels or Bootcamp, so I am effectively and totally blocked from “Watch Now.”
I thought I would drop a friendly line to Netflix to comment on the lack of fairness in this feature and suggested it could be offset by providing occasional freebies for Mac users, such as two rentals at a time for people who only have one-at-a-time (me).
No reply from Netflix yet, except an autoresponder comment that they would respond soon.
I’m in a more rural area, as some others mentioned, and I love the convenience of this service overall.
Daivd Pogue of the New York Times in his review of Netflix Watch Now mentions that Macintosh support is in the works. That was January 2007! It sure has taken them a while to get this thing ready for Mac; Firefox/Safari/Opera… I don’t care… just make it happen!
Watch Now is partially why I signed back on with Netflix.
I think the “watch now” option is awesome. I hate walletbuster, and watching online is great for spur of the moment ideas… cleaning up around the house… think about a movie, and watch it.
They REALLY need to broaden their offerings though. I would totally up my subscription if they had more to watch.
Get the TV shows up. If they have a movie up, have the sequels as well (once upon a time in china for example =P).
Movie rental stores are old tech… out with the old, in with the new.
I am extremely disappointed with Netflix Watch it!
First: they have no closed captioning nor indication of english subtitles on their available movies!
Second: the department that deals with Netfix watch it is VOMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO REACH OVER THE PHONE.
I’ve tried them at least ten times, two or 3 time I held the phone for over
25 minutes with nos success.
Could anyone help me on this? Netflix sure does not even though I am more than 3 years their customer! HELP,HELP,HELP PLEASE!
I am glad to see Neflix expanding their offerings outside of the traditional DVD. I not only use Netflix, but am an investor as well. I have tried the Blockbuster in store dropoff as well. Problem is that Blockbuster takes forever to mail you a new movie from the dropoff. Netflix ships much faster so you get more bang for your buck. Plus once you have perused the library at Blockbuster, all you have left is new releases. Netflix is the winner!
It’s a nice idea but the limits killed it. Streaming movies of equal (or better) quality exist now on the web in a rapidly growing supply–legitimately or not–and are completely free and have no time limits. As it is the DVD in the snail mail thing compared to cable on-demand and web streaming is slow and unsatisfying.
One hour per dollar spent? Plus the inevitable disconnects and resets, lost hours to re-viewing, and the currently really boring selection is worthy of a good old hearty belly laugh. Seriously??
One house, three users=”month’s worth” gone in two days. On the third day you’re looking to other sources, and after that, why go back?
Weak.
I’ve tried Netflix for their 2 week trial period and subscribed to it for another full month. I watched about 15 great movies for only $15 or so, but eventually I watched so many movies that I couldn’t find any more. There eventually was a point where I rented just average movies that I never felt like watching, but I wouldn’t want to mail it back until I watched it. During the last 2-3 weeks of my plan I didn’t really watch any movies, so I decided to cancel it. I left a $5 used DVD at my friends house for a month and Netflix charged me $20 for it, even though they were selling it for $5! They should have let me just pay what ever they were selling it for until I returned it instead of charging me an outrageous $20 fee.
When better movies came out I tried Blockbuster’s free plan for another month. When I first signed up, Blockbuster seemed much better than Netflix. I watched another 15 - 20 movies in only a month because you can exchange movies in the store. However, when there were no 4-5 star movies left to watch, Netflix is MUCH better. First, Blockbuster tries to trick you. Before I signed up, Blockbuster’s ads all said that you can exchange unlimited movies at the store. I thought that you could get a movie through the mail, watch it, exchange it for another movie at the store, watch it, then exchange that movie at the store the same day…which would actually allow you to watch unlimited movies as long as you didn’t mind driving a dozen times a day. After I signed up and wanted to exchange my first movie, I was told that I had to return it to the store in a week or I would have to pay late fees for each movie. Why can’t Blockbuster allow us to take out our next movie on the list at the store and give us the option of exchanging it for another at the store or through the mail. It was misguiding because I was only told their rules in small fine print AFTER I paid them. At first, it seemed like no problem because I was eager to go back to Blockbuster’s store to pick out new movies. However, after I was left with average to boring movies, I never felt like watching them, so they would just sit around my house accumulating late fees. My $15 free membership ended up costing me $15 anyway. I was going to continue the membership anyway because it was still a good deal as long as I returned the movies on time, but at the end of my free month in August, they added a limit on the number of free exchanges that you can get each month. It used to be unlimited, now they dropped it down to 2 or 3 a month for an average plan, when I used to get 10+. It was the same price as Netflix, so I cancelled it. Blockbuster also charged me $20 for not returning a movie, but they reversed it a month later when I returned it.
I recently signed up with Netflix again for their $5 plan because their “Watch It Instantly” movies seemed cool. I was highly disappointed when I signed up because they only have 5,000 crappy movies to watch, but they didn’t tell you this until AFTER you sign up. They advertise that they have 80,000 movies and I believed that you could watch any movie online that you could get through the mail. I spent 3 hours searching through all of the movies and I couldn’t find one movie that I wanted to watch or even one that seemed a bit interesting. There were maybe half a dozen decent movies that you can watch, but I’ve already saw them dozens of times. I searched again for a few hours and I’ve found only one 15-year old TV series that I may be in the mood to watch sometimes. I was finally ready to watch it, but then it said that I could only use Internet Explorer, which I despise because it runs so slow and spyware seems to like it. My password was stored on Mozilla (my usual browser) and I had no idea what it was because I made it a year or two ago. I spent 15 minutes searching for my password in emails and trying to think of what it could be, but when I recently signed up with it again and they didn’t tell me what the password was. I eventually found a link that said “Forgot your password” and it took a few more minutes for me to check my email, reset the password, and save it for future use. It only took a few minutes to download and install their movie player.
I finally was able to watch the movie! It loaded in about 30 seconds. My crappy Netgear router was plugged in, and when there a download for over 5 minutes or multiple downloads, my Internet seems to disconnect. So I had to unplug my router and hook up my Internet just to one computer, which disconnects my family’s Internet. When my Internet was back up I started to watch another episode from the TV series and found out that I already saw that episode and didn’t feeling like watching it again. I loaded another episode and haven’t watched it in years, so watched the whole episode.
The next day I logged into my Netflix account and expected to have been charged 45 minutes for all 3 shows, but it only counted 2 minutes for the show that was disconnected, a minute for the show that I already watched and turned off, and the full 45 minutes for the show that I did watch, so I have over 4 hours and 10 minutes left during this month. I love how you can preview 30 seconds or five minutes or just watch it until you feel like watching something else without having to rent the entire movie. How many times have you rented a movie and in 10 minutes you shut it off and wished that you had another movie? The only problem with Netflix’s instant online movies is that THERE ARE NONE! It feels like a full-time job trying to find a movie that I would rate above 1 and a half stars. Plus, your movie minutes don’t rollover to the next month, so you HAVE to watch boring movies or you lose your watching time.
To sum things up, at this moment, I feel that neither Blockbuster nor Netflix deserves our subscription payment because of their sneaky tactics and inconstant policies. They are slowly implementing new features 6 months at a time and it could be a great service for one month and be horrible the next without any warning. Blockbuster should just allow you to exchange movies online OR at the store WITHOUT having to drive to the store to avoid late fees, because they ACTUALLY said they would. Netflix should allow you to download all of their movies like they implied, instead of only 6.25% of the worst of the worst of the WORST movies that they carry (and not tell you until you already paid!). Plus, both companies will charge you $20 per movie if you don’t sent it back right away or lose it by accident. If you’re paying $18 or whatever for 3 movies a month and then cancel, besides the $18, you’ll pay another $60 + tax for the 3 movies (Even if they’re selling the movies for $1 each!). Both companies basically lie straight to your face before you sign up on their advertisements, at the store’s advertisements, by the store’s employees, and by their website. The only way that you can find out is by reading a forum like this, by finding extra fees on your credit card statement, or by asking the right phrased questions if doubt their word.
All in all, the Blockbuster deal is better in terms of flexibility. You can pretty much watch and exchange at your leisure (with some caveats of course).
Netflix is bound to the mail system. It has the Watch Instantly feature which is great if you like watching on a computer. If not, its pretty irrelevant. I personally have a PC connected to my living room TV & stereo so it actually works out pretty well. Granted there is a limited selection, but it does seem to be getting better.
But alas, I think that the choice between the two subscriptions is highly dependent on your movie preferences. If you primarily watch new Hollywood releases, big-budget movies, and big-to-bigger movie studio films I think that Blockbuster is for you. I mostly watch independent films, foreign films, and documentaries. For my movie preferences Netflix is better hands-down. The selection is way more extensive in these areas and I’d venture to say more extensive in others but I haven’t done much comparison with my non-preferred movie types.
Not to mention Netflix has a great web interface. Blockbuster’s is lacking in aesthetics and in user-friendliness. Netflix also has great Community/Friends functionality that I use quite frequently with friends of mine.
So all-in-all, it depends. I like Netflix.
Has anybody tried WatchIt Now on a plain MacBook instead of a MacBook Pro?
i had netflix for a year. then ended it to try out blockbuster online. i can’t comment on how bbo was prior to my experience. but in the short time i did have it, the prices raised/month and bbo updated to the new style layout. this was all between dec 1st,’07-end of jan-08. the reason i switched back to netflix was cuz i bbo deleted the 800 number and only sent copy/paste responses when emailing them. the thing i can’t grasp is netflix has 3x’s what bbo has. yet bbo can’t seem to keep up with demand on having movies in stock. out of the entire time i had/have netflix only 2 dvds were send out of order. literally 8 out of every 10 movies in bbo “Q” were very long wait. plus i don’t like to waste expensive gas to dive to bb store every other day. i love the watch now feature. it used to be $1/1-hour. now its unlimited as long as you don’t have the 2 dvd limit/month. the only 2 things i hate about watch now are fact you need to know the movies you want to watch. with dvds its all right in front of you. they don’t give you a full list of internet movies. and netflix has this adding the oldest movies possible to the list first before adding newer titles. but other then that i love it.