Netflix has been around forever, but I was never interested in getting a subscription. I felt like a luddite or a cavewoman, having to go to the video stores to rent. But serioulsy, it was just sooooo unappealing to me that I have to PLAN what to watch days ahead. There are so many things in life that I have to PLAN ahead. Why should I plan my video rental? This is one of very few things left that I can do spontaneously. So I have been going to local video stores. When my local video store finally shut down, I was resorted to the limited selections from video-on-demand offered by our cable provider.
Recently, I learned about Netflix VOD from one of my esteemed colleague. Wow, this is going to change my life! There are a ton of selections, including foreign and independent films. The video quality is pretty good. On our 42 inch HD TV, the quality is as good as Time Warner HD channels. It uses embedded player in Internet Explorer. The streaming happens within seconds and when the internet connection is flaky, the player retries and resumes.
For $8.99 a month for unlimited streaming, I say this is the best bargain ever. I just hope this isn't just an introductory teaser rate.
One on my wishlist is the ability to use remote control rather than keyboard/mouse attached to the PC. Even with wireless keyboard/mouse, it's a bit pain. Otherwise, I love this!
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After having used it for a month, here are some fresher perspective.
- The movie selection is definitely only a fraction of the DVD selection. It's still much better than cable's VOD or DirecTV Pay-per-View, I think.
- If your internet is flaky, it can be frustrating at times. At certain points, movie pauses and the expected time to resume can be 10s of minutes. Sometimes, the player re-evaluates your download speed and significantly reduces the video quality. All this no fault of NetFlix; it's just the side-effect of having unreliable internet service.
- I still like it. It augments planned DVD rental very well.
