Netflix finally brings 'Watch Instantly' to Macs via Silverlight
MEDIA PLAYER FOR INSTANT STREAMING
ON WINDOWS PCs AND INTEL MACS
Based on Microsoft Silverlight, New Player Features Enhanced Dynamic Streaming, First-Time Use for Macs and
Breakthrough Navigation for Fast-Forward and Rewind
LOS GATOS, Calif., October 27, 2008 – Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it has begun the deployment of Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant watching component of the Netflix service and to allow subscribers for the first time to watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.
Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.
"Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users' connection speeds," said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. "Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gossamer88 @ Oct 26th 2008 10:38PM
Oh the irony...but I'll take it!
aaron @ Oct 26th 2008 11:19PM
i posted this in engadget but it belongs here more.
this should also mean firefox support finally.... also has there been any indication with this new player that we might get higher quality versions? reason i ask is i was listening to the most recent 1up yours podcast.... near the end of the show they talked about the nxe (they have it in house already) and made some interesting comments... a hd logo and streaming at 5.0 mbit (the current max on netflix is 3.5).
its very circumstantial until the public beta goes live but could be interesting.
UnnDunn @ Oct 26th 2008 11:40PM
Hey, I still have my 360 HD DVD player, and I'm gorging myself on a feast of cheap HD DVD movies, thank you very much.
startswithaj @ Oct 27th 2008 1:29AM
i will keep my matrix player, tyvm!
personman @ Oct 27th 2008 1:30AM
Why is this on engadget HD? Is it streaming in HD?
DrXym @ Oct 27th 2008 6:49AM
"Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser."
Silverlight is a Flash player wannabe, with the added "attraction" that OS X and Linux, and non-MS browsers will always receive an inferior experience to Internet Explorer and Windows.
Flash isn't perfect but there is little reason Netflix would have chosen something else unless Microsoft paid them a big pile of money or concessions (e.g. free server licences) to use their fifth wheel.
THizzle7XU @ Oct 27th 2008 12:58PM
Well, we also live in America were competition is king, and so far MS is the only one to offer a legit competitor to Flash. Complain all you want about MS trying to be like Adobe, but at the end of the day, at least there is a reason for Adobe to advance Flash player now. Just look at the recent release of version 10 after how long a gap from 9?
And maybe MS just has a more versatile player. Good for the consumer then who can get a better experience. Plus, Silverlight works on Firefox, so that support should be close as well if you don't like IE.
Adam @ Oct 27th 2008 1:03PM
Maybe Microsoft paid for it, but I doubt it. I think silverlight probably was chosen for its integrated DRM that flash lacks. It's all conjecture and just pointless.
DrXym @ Oct 28th 2008 6:42AM
Microsoft has a long, long history of paying lip service to cross-platform, cross-browser or open standards and then dumping it when the competition has gone bust or given up. Prior examples:
* Releasing IE for Unix for free so people don't buy the Netscape browser on Unix. Once Netscape died, IE for Unix was canned.
* Removing scripting support in WMP9 for Mozilla browser so sites like ESPN and others no longer work in anything but IE.
* Extending HTML with proprietary scripting languages (VBScript) and ActiveX tags to tie it to Windows
* Poisoning run-anywhere Java by adding delegates and other proprietary extensions to the MS implementation so they only run on Windows.
* Extending Kerberos with proprietary extensions so it is incompatible with other implementations.
* Railroading "Open XML" (MS Office file format redone as XML) through ISO certification even though the spec is 10x larger than OpenDocument Format and riddled with holes. All to shut down ODF before they have to support it.
* Poisoning .NET with PInvokes, ActiveX and other extensions that encourage (and often require) developers to make native Win32 calls, thus tying .NET to Windows
* Paying lip service to cross-platform .NET by informally endorsing Mono but shifting the goalposts continuously (and continuing to make it easy to poison apps with native calls) that Mono will never catch up.
* Basing Silverlight on proprietary WMP codecs instead of industry standards like H264.
* Not even bothering to implement Silverlight on Linux, laughably pretending that "Moonlight" (the Mono implementation) is somehow going to perfectly support proprietary codecs amongst other things.
Etcetera.
While Adobe isn't perfect, it does run cross platform, implements various industry video formats like H264 and has DRM too if that's what Netflix wants. More importantly Adobe doesn't own an operating system or a browser so they have no incentive in pretending to support OS X or Linux and then pulling the rug later as part of the game plan. Microsoft does, and has done it plenty of times in the past.
I see no reason for thinking Microsoft have changed. If you think this time is going any different then you are fooling yourself. I see no reason that Netflix would go Silverlight except for an enormous money hat to do so. If you see whitepapers or case studies for Netflix show up on the Silverlight site you will know exactly that's what happened.
Jason @ Oct 27th 2008 8:38AM
"Like a normal person"? Is that what the menu really says? Please tell me they're not actively insulting their customers.
It's a fake, I hope.
yves @ Oct 27th 2008 11:12AM
It doesn't work yet. At least their website has not been updated to allow me to play anything on my mac. I do have Silverlight installed and an intel mac.
Nipsey Russell @ Oct 27th 2008 1:35PM
PS3, please???? when will the software be something the PS3 can handle????
MadDog @ Oct 27th 2008 2:39PM
The PlayOn media server does a great job streaming Netflix to PS3. Not free though, but so far the company has provided great support and continual updates to it's near finished beta product. Recommended.
John Drinkwater @ Nov 2nd 2008 10:11AM
Bah, more Silverlight crap.