Netflix: Coming soon to a Mac near you

With little fanfare, Netflix previewed a feature many Mac users have wanted to see for quite some time.

A little tidbit tucked away at the bottom of a blog entry posted in the wee hours of the morning proclaims that the movie rental company will make its "Watch now" service work on Macs by the end of this year.

Separately, the company announced that it has forged a deal with Starz that adds 2,500 movies and TV shows to its streaming library.

Netflix still has a long way to go before its instant viewing library can compare with its DVD rental library (of 132 movies in my personal Netflix queue, only 21 are available for instant viewing). The relatively small number of videos available for streaming have limited the "Watch now" feature's usefulness for some time (not to mention that of the Roku player). But the added titles and forthcoming Mac compatibility does bring Netflix one step closer to being truly competitive with the iTunes Store for video rentals.

Now to get a few more deals made, and the streaming service working with Firefox.

[technewsjunkie]

About time!

[ikramerica--2008]

So is Apple all of a sudden licensing the DRM that Netflix claims they can't get their hands on? Or was that really just a lie like it sounded, a cover to for laziness? My vote has always been for the latter.

[jwmpc]

Streaming is not as clean and elegant as downloading a temporary file. I finally tried a rental (it was free) from the iTunes store, and the quality was great. Hulu, on the other hand, suffers when trying to get through my dsl connection. Too many compression artifacts, and stops and starts from rebuffering.

[gsmiller88]

It's a shame Apple had to add movie rentals first before Netflix decided to support the Mac.

[Gasaraki]

"So is Apple all of a sudden licensing the DRM that Netflix claims they can't get their hands on? Or was that really just a lie like it sounded, a cover to for laziness? My vote has always been for the latter."

They are probably going to use Microsoft Silverlight, which is multiplatform compatible.

[steve4lee]

Silverlight doesn't run on PPC Macs at all, so it's a bit of a stretch to call it compatible with Macs. I've read that some people had decent luck with it during the Olympics on Intel Macs, and some people didn't. I didn't bother with it myself.

As for competition, I suspect that Amazon's VOD was more of a factor than Apple's rentals.

[Dowap0]

Weird, I installed silverlight on my PPC G5.

[illwrath]

Use IE Tab, it's an add-on for Firefox. You can stream all you want from Netflix then. Not sure if it would work on a Mac though.

[jonathanlambert]

Too late! They should have shipped with this day 1. Don't they realize that much of the early adopter community that would buy them all their free pr is mac based?

I already canceled Netflix, and replaced them with Video on Demand from Surewest and Hulu.

Now I'm looking into MythTV to replace everything, as I'm tired of entertainment companies shoving irrelevant ads down my throat.

[elgarak]

Not a big deal for me. I stream Netflix all the time... with Windows XP running parallel in a virtual machine. But, yes, a direct support in Mac OS X would be extremely nice.

Oh, IE Tab: Not available for Mac OS X (RTFM or ****).

[FrontTooth]

I am Mac user and own the Roku box (got it within two weeks of release). Love the streaming movies feature and get good quality picture. The Roku customer service is excellent - Initially I called them a few times about low res picture quality. The agent walked me through resolution. I actually spoke with a living person who was helpful and patient with my concerns. I changed some settings on my router and now its great.
I hope the Starz deal infuses the streaming Netflix library variety - many of my choice picks are not available to stream. Strange that some episodes of series are available and others not (within same season).
I looked at buying Apple TV box earlier this year, however, Apple wants to monopolize any endeavor they get into (i.e. iTunes). Don't know why Apple won't release a devise that is open platform for general use instead of serving as a tool for Apple control. Just a comment. I am a Mac faithful, BTW, and have been since release of 1st Mac back in 1984. I wish Roku and Netflix well in holding off attempts Apple may make to buy them.

[thefilebunch]

It won't be long before Apple runs a rental business model like Netflix through AppleTV. For a monthly fee you will download and hold a certain number of movies, then you can swap them out with another movie.

[AppleSuxLeo]

What about Apple-Jobs/TV ??? snicker snicker...

[BigGuns149]

Maybe I am missing something, but Apple's service doesn't have a lot of selection either. iTunes certainly has improved since they started selling videos, but I don't think most people would be satisfied with iTunes selection for very long either. After a few weeks most people would exhaust everything that interested them.

[MaggieRed]

Apple TV hasn't been out that long, remember the first year of iTunes! Give it time and the studios time to get more up there. Lots of new appears every week.

For netflix, sorry I like my Apple TV. You should have thought about this when you only wanted to support Windows, and said screw the Mac. Well same back to ya.

[Winona Tona]

The Starz catalog will bolster the existing "Instant Watching" catalog with some newer releases but all in all there is more B movies than not. At this writing, it requires a better than basic DSL connection for good resolution and connectivity but if that's all you have, it's not bad for the stand up comics and talking head documentaries.