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Reoport: Netflix’s Fantastic Streaming Movie Service Coming To iPhone

netflix_watch_instantly

Good news for couch potatoes: Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming movie service is headed to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Netflix’s fantastic streaming movie service is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a report in the trade mag Multichannel News.

Citing “an industry executive familiar with Netflix’s plans,” the trade mag says Netflix’s Watch Instantly service is headed to the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nintendo Wii. However, because of bandwidth concerns, it will likely be available only over WiFi  and not AT&T’s 3G network, MN says.

Either way, it’s great news.

I’m a subscriber and a big fan of Netflix’s service, which I find to be easier, more convenient and much, much cheaper than Apple’s iTunes. For about $20 a month, we get to stream a wide a wide variety of TV shows and movies from Netflix instead of paying a la carte for rentals or purchases from iTunes.

Indeed, Netflix’s Watch Instantly is the strongest of the online on-demand video services — the gold standard for content on demand.

The selection isn’t comprehensive, but I find it to be pretty good. There’s not the latest releases, but there’s a pretty deep and wide library of great movies, which is more than can be said for iTunes, which I find unbearably popcorn and shallow.

In addition, Netflix movies stream quickly, the quality is great, even on a big 42-inch HDTV, and we’ve never, ever encountered a problem — a rare and astonishing testament to the company’s technology.  (We use the service through a Samsung Blu-Ray player which streams Netflix and Pandora).

The service is already available on a wide range of devices from Windows PCs and Macs, to the Xbox 360, TiVo and several Blu-Ray DVD players with support for streaming downloads.

Via AppleInsider.

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

5 comments

    [...] iPod Touch users will be able to use the Netflix Watch instantly streaming service, according to a report in Multichannel News. The app will work off WiFi connections (not the AT&T 3G servers, which creak under any added [...]

    I have to say… I don’t understand all the hype behind Netflix streaming. The video quality teeters on the edge of unwatchable, and the video selection is pretty weak. I love Netflix overall, but if I want to watch a movie, I want to A) be sitting in front of my tv and not my laptop and B) see the movie in quality that doesn’t look like an enlarged YouTube clip.

    [...] degli utenti, tanto per l’offerta che per la qualità. CultOfMac, per dirne una, ne canta le lodi rispetto al bouquet dello stesso iTunes Store, definito un cinema superficiale e da popcorn. Tutto [...]

    Well, there are also other legal sources, besides this one, for getting movies and probably finding the latest releases: http://audials.com/en/blog/article/34/3-ways-to-legally-download-movies-and-videos-from-the-internet.html

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