Webware

Netflix has expanded its "Watch Instantly" movie-streaming player to include Macintosh-owning subscribers.

The company announced on its blog Friday that it is past its first phase of beta testing and invited subscribers who wanted to opt in to do so. But the company had a few warnings for prospective users:

• There may be bugs. We are logging all errors, but if you run into problems, you can help out by posting details here in the blog comments.

• Not all movies are available to watch with Silverlight. You may notice errors or lower than normal quality when watching certain titles.

• Our new player works on PCs and Intel-based Macs.

• Windows users should be aware that if you opt in, you will need to use Silverlight on all the machines you use to watch instantly.

The company announced on Monday that it would be using Microsoft's Silverlight software to deliver streaming movies not only to PCs, but also to Intel-based Macs. 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 Macs. According to Netflix, this had not been possible with previous technologies.

Netflix members should expect a "faster, easier connection, and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight," the company said. One of the enhancements is in timeline navigation, which will purportedly improve the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding.

The company also said in the blog post that it has expanded the number of movies and television programs available through the "Watch Instantly" service, but the company still has a long way to go before the service can compete with its DVD selection.

Since Netflix introduced its Watch Instantly service back in January 2007, Mac owners have been left out in the cold. Besides using Apple's Boot Camp software, or third-party solutions like Parallels and VMware to use Windows, there was no other way to watch Netflix's streaming videos with out-of-the-box Mac software.

That's changing as of Tuesday, as Netflix has begun rolling out its new Microsoft Silverlight-based streaming service to a small number of monthly subscribers. I've been playing with it all morning, and it works marvelously. Both the Mac and PC players are identical, and in side-by-side testing the quality is too.

One of the most dramatic improvements is the new timeline navigation. This new system shows you thumbnails from a few seconds before and a few seconds after whatever part of the video you're on, giving you a quick way to eyeball where you are. In my case, I was picking up on an episode of Showtime's Dexter and was able to find the spot where I had left off without having to watch any of the video. This technology is actually saving Netflix some bandwidth, as users are able to pinpoint a precise segment without having to wait for the content to stream in.

The new timeline preview feature lets you see a few seconds before and a few after.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Another small, but neat improvement is that you can now hop back and forth between episodes in a series with small arrow keys located on the bottom of the player. If you're sitting down to power through several episodes this skips having to go back to the content directory.

The weak point of Netflix's streaming service is still the selection of content. As others have mentioned, it's a far cry from the service's DVD selection. One thing that could change that is the inclusion of PlayReady DRM, which comes by way of using Silverlight. With that in place we could be seeing the company's selection of streaming titles increase dramatically by year's end as long as Netflix is able to woo more content providers to share their movies and TV shows with a more secure delivery platform.

Update: Here's a video of the updated service in action.