Apple TV heat gets Netflix streaming

By Vivek | January 16th, 2007 at 03:47 am ET         

Well it is not just Apple. Besides the old foe Blockbuster, Netflix has recently seen dedicated and planned moves from Microsoft, Amazon, Movielink, and Cinemanow that stream movies direct to consumers. Seeing the writing on the wall, Netflix today announced that from Tuesday it will start streaming movies and television shows directly to users’ PCs. Netflix will initially be putting up 1000 titles from NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers and others. After the rollout of the service in the next 6 months, Netflix will working on delivering movies to portable devices and TVs.

As for how much bang you get for your bucks - subscribers on the $18/month plan will be able to get 18 hours of free watching every month. Lower and higher priced plans get hours adjusted accordingly. Right now $18 plan gets you 3 movies, which can make upto 12 movies for the month or 18 -24 hours of viewing time. I am not sure what will be stand of Netflix on pre-roll advertising given the limited viewing time. Anyway, streaming was never the issue. Painless delivery of the movie your TV is what we need. Setting up the movie to stream, getting the laptop s-video port hooked up to the TV, changing the power options for your PC,….are just too many hoops you need to go through to watch a movie.

Today I was planning send out my last movie and finally say goodbye and thank you to Netflix for a service that I rarely used. I think I will stick to that plan. Apple TV seems delicious.

[via]