January 14th, 2008
Netflix to Make Internet Viewing Option “Unlimited”
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Apple is expected to announce a movie rental service at Macworld. Hoping to reduce some of the impact, Netflix is going to expand its streaming movie service, according to AP. Formerly users could only watch a limited number of hours based on their subscription tier, but beginning Monday, all but the lowest tier will have unlimited access to streaming video.
For instance, the $16.99 per month / three DVDs at a time tier allowed customers to watch as many as 17 hours of entertainment each month on the streaming service. That plan, along with all but the $4.99 / two DVD per month plan would have unlimited streaming.
Right now the service requires users to watch the programming on a Windows PC with a high-speed Internet connection. This leaves out Mac users, something Apple isn’t going to do.
However, with LG and Netflix working on a set-top box for release later this year, streaming will likely become more popular.
As now, the streaming service will be provided at no additional charge.
Update: Confirmed, the Netflix site now shows the “new limits.”
Hamoth says:
Yeah, but at what resolutions are these sevices going to be? Many who download and are looking for alternative streaming technologies are looking for a way to pipe some hd content to their new sets.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Kevin K. says:
Not sure the resolution issue is going to be that big a deal. I guess in terms of a home theater experience, all you really need is DVD quality resolution to be reasonably satisfied.
All I can say is that we missed several episodes of Lost a year or so ago and ABC had them on their website so we sat in front of our 22″ wide screen computer monitor and watched them comfortably even though the resolution on a computer monitor was not spectacular. The ability to stream the episodes and *see* them at all far outweighed any other issues.
January 14th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Ed3 says:
Not far from becoming an IP-based television service…
January 14th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Netflix Streams 6000 Movies to Watch Instantly - Now Unlimited » says:
[…] Today Netflix announced that almost all of their subscribers will have unlimited movie streaming capability through it’s Watch Now service. […]
January 14th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Parth says:
we have to take a connectivity of unlimited net
May 7th, 2008 at 11:08 pm