Netflix on Xbox Live

With the new Xbox Live release, Netflix brings instant online movie access to the masses. Now anyone with a Netflix “unlimited” memebership and Xbox Live can quickly and easily stream movies on demand to their TV.

On Your Screen, on Your Schedule

Netflix continues to expand its “Watch Instantly” library, currently over 12,000 of its total 100,000 titles are available for instant viewing. While watching on your laptop works in a pinch (think stuck in an airport), the real beauty of instant movie access happens with friends and family on your inhome screen. Netflix has teamed up with a number of partners to bring instant viewing to TV. The current list of Netflix-ready devices includes a $99 set top box from Roku and Blu-Ray players from Samsung and LG in the $350-400 range.

But for the 25 million Xbox 360 owners out there right now, there’s no need to plunk down additional cash for another black box. With an Xbox Live Gold membership, you can link your Xbox directly to your Netflix account. Every movie in your Instant Queue is available — instantly — on your big screen, optimized to balance image quality and smooth playback. And now with Xbox Live, Netflix has opened the door to online HD. Over 300 movies and TV titles are available to watch instantly in high def. Xbox is the only Netflix-ready device with HD access.

The Price is Right

Once you’ve added the Xbox Live Gold membership — which in itself offers thousands of pay per view titles, adding Netflix is pretty painless. The Netflix “unlimited” plans start at $8.99/month, which gives you unlimited DVDs per month (1 disc at a time) plus unlimited access to Watch Instantly. If you want more DVD choices in the house at once, they have the plans to accommodate.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice…

Opportunities for improvement? Sure. The browsing interface is pretty limited: you can’t sort or tag the titles in your instant queue, so the more titles you add, the more cumbersome the queue becomes. We’re on the 4-disk-at-a-time plan, and everyone in the family has their own queue. However, only one queue gets access to Watch Instantly, so the instant queue can get pretty thick in a hurry.

More control over resolution would be a plus. Netflix automatically chooses the video quality to give you the best image possible based on the speed of your Internet connection. The faster your Internet connection, the higher the quality that they’ll deliver. Sounds great, but any slowdown in connectivity during playback pauses the show, while the software recalculates the new resolution to send. In my house, this happens once with almost every viewing, usually about two minutes into playback. If I could avoid the pause by setting a preference for slightly lower resolution, I’d be set. Meanwhile, my only option is an ongoing discussion with my ISP on the merits of delivering consistent service.

Looking Forward

The folks at Netflix recently came out with their growth strategy for 2009 and beyond, and distributing entertainment online is at the center of it all: “We know the future belongs to instant watching, to streaming to your TV.” The Netflix-enabled devices work well and make streaming simple. Their Watch Instantly collection is on the fast track: recent agreements with CBS, Disney, and Starz have increased the library size by 20% in the past two months. And their fixed-price approach, which has proven to be so popular with DVDs, is a welcome alternative to the growing world of online pay-per-views. These guys are moving in the right direction as TV adapts to the internet, and they saw it coming way back when. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently remarked, “There’s a good reason we didn’t name the ecompany DVDs-by-Mail.”