[Movies] Netflix

I am lovin' on the Netflix right now. Here's the story.

Yuki signed up for Blockbuster online awhile ago, yet since I got to NYC we haven't used it. Yes, that's right, since I've got there LAST JUNE, not one DVD has been sent or received from Blockbuster online.

Now, we recently signed up for a temp mail box here in Vegas, so I decided it would be a good idea to start using the service since there is just nothing to do when we are in Laughlin. At the very least, we can bring a couple of movies with us for the three or four days we are here.

However, we don't really go to the Blockbuster locations, so the two free coupons we get a month that I could use for game rentals isn't entirely practical. I decided we would cancel her Blockbuster Online account (kudos to Bb for giving us until JUNE to return the movies we currently have out).

We signed up for Netflix on Sunday night, instead, because I wanted to try out their streaming service. They have a decent list of movies you can watch streaming. They claim 8,000+, but we know I won't verify that number.

In addition to your mail queue, you get an "Instant Queue." I don't why they call it a queue, tho, since there is no limit on the number of movies you can watch, how man times you watch them, or what order you watch them in. Its more of a way to remember movies you may want to stream in the future than an actual queue.

So, last night Yuki added The Tick to the instant queue (not the animated series, the live-action series). We watched the first episode, and the quality was pretty good. After that, I decided to watch The Karate Kid (they also have 2 and 3 available to stream). Yuki had never seen it, so we ended up staying awake until 2am watching it.

There are a couple of drawbacks. First, it appears that some movies can appear blurry for some reason. I tried watching Tin Cup and Notting Hill (Yuki wanted a RomCom, and I like those two), but they were too blurry to watch. It was most noticeable when there was text on the screen, like actor names and such, but I only made it 15 minutes into Notting Hill before I had to stop it and try The Karate Kid. I couldn't find any explanation for the blurriness in their FAQ, nor is there any way to decide what settings to use for streaming playback.

This leads to a second, and killer drawback for Soy or Roop. The streaming service can only be used on Windows XP or Vista, and only in IE (although, an IE tab loaded in Firefox worked on my PC). It has to do with Apple not licensing out their DRM to anyone. So, for the foreseeable future, Mac-boys are going to be left out in the cold.

Otherwise, I'm quite content with it for now. I only encountered one spot where the movie had to stop and buffer. Groundhog Day, The Karate Kid, The Tick; they all looked great. They even have entire TV series available for streaming, although this list is small. Most notable would The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, and Law & Order.

I'm happy, for now. I hope they can improve their streaming library, but for now its very nice.