I recently decided to give Netflix’ streaming video service a try, seeing as how they now offer unlimited online viewing to subscribers. Here’s my take on it, in case you haven’t tried it yet.

First some immediate negatives to the service:

• - It’s Windows only. At first this really annoyed me, both because I would rather watch the movies on my laptop, which I can easily hook into the tv, and also because I think that new technology ideas miss the boat by skipping Macintosh, as Mac users are usually the ones who latch onto things like this and advertise them for free on their blogs. I’ve since found references to the fact that this is a technical issue with Apples’ proprietary DRM, and that Netflix is working on it, but when I first tried it on my laptop it suggested I try a different operating system (friendlier message now, I just checked).
• - It’s Internet Explorer only. I assume that this will change if they’re opening up to Macs, but for now, it’s really grating to have to use IE for this, when I haven’t used that browser for years. Again, they may be catering to a large user base who uses the browser their computer came with, but those aren’t the evangelists.
• - The plugin installation was meant to be seamless for Windows XP vanilla or (presumably) Vista, but I use XP 64-bit, and clicking on the install link gave me the runaround. I eventually tricked it into letting me install, and went to Microsoft’s site to upgrade Windows Media Player manually (something Netflix told me my OS wouldn’t support). Now, the average user probably wouldn’t have to deal with this, but still it was completely a problem with Netflix’ install process that would be easy to fix.

Anyway, I got it installed last week, and despite the annoyances, the service itself actually shows a lot of promise. I was worried about performance given that I don’t have the speediest internet connection (DSL grade). The quality will adjust depending on connection speed, but apparently I get the highest quality. There are never any skips, buffering, lags, dropouts, etc. I watch at fullscreen on my 21-inch widescreen monitor, and it looks great. More impressive to me (who watches a lot of streaming video of various forms) was the fact that I could pause the video, sometimes for DAYS in standby mode, and come back and it would pick right up where I stopped it.

From a practical standpoint, I wasn’t sure if I would use this much, especially if I am tied to my desktop. The selection is very small; think what you might see on HBO outside of primetime. A lot of old classics, a lot of documentaries, TV shows. Still, there are a lot of things I’ve missed, and a few things in my queue are available online, so unless they’re something Ed wants to see, I’ll watch them online. I have a futon in my office, a nice monitor, and am in the middle of an office-painting project, so it works out.

If Netflix works out the Mac thing (which I think they will), and the selection thing (which I think they will), I’ll call it a win. I don’t want to rent movies from Apple given their pricing model and expiration date policy, but this method works for me.