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Netflix talks 'Instant Viewing' for Mac

by Scott McNulty Aug 16th 2007 at 4:00PM

There are a few companies who, through their products and services, have earned a special place in my heart. Apple is one (obviously), as well as Amazon, New Balance, Nintendo, and Netflix. Netflix, in case you haven't heard of them, makes money via a subscription model. You pay a monthly fee and that gives you access to their monstrous DVD catalog. Pick a DVD and they'll mail it out to you in a nifty envelope that also serves as a the return envelope.

Alright, so now we all know what Netflix is, why the heck am I blogging about it on TUAW? You might recall that Netflix has recently started streaming movies for members via their website. This feature is called 'Watch Now,' and appears on any movie that has been digitized for streaming. Sadly, this very cool feature is only available for PC users. The dev responsible for this feature posted about why Mac users are left out of all the fun.

It basically comes down to the fact that there is no movie studio approved way to wrap these streams in DRM, so the movie studios won't let it happen on the Mac. FairPlay is mentioned, but as we know Apple isn't licensing that. Luckily, the solution might be coming from an unlikely source: Microsoft. Silverlight, Mircosoft's answer to Flash, uses Microsoft's DRM which the studios do approve of. Silverlight is still in beta (for both Macs and PCs) but it does look very promising (and on my Intel Mac it was pretty peppy).

Thanks, Mike.

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There are a few companies who, through their products and services, have earned a special place in my heart. Apple is one (obviously), as...
 

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Jean-Denis Muys

Well, I am surprised nobody mentionned it yet: there is a publicly available DRM technology for video on the Mac.

It is currently used by the INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel), the French TV archive administration, to offer all their video on-line. And it works on Macs. See the English version at http://www.ina.fr/index.en.html

This technology is the one proposed by DivX. It works.It's just a shame this isn't mentionned more. Now, I'd also rather have all DRM eradicated.

Jean-Denis

August 17 2007 at 3:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ben the Dog

And again, I silently pray for the destruction of the person(s) responsible for DRM...

August 16 2007 at 11:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
required

Andrew, I think it has something to do with the netflix banner ad.

August 16 2007 at 6:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Andrew

I'm confused, how is this news? This seems to be a reference to Netflix saying, again, that at this time they have no specific plans for supporting Macs with this feature. It's almost exactly what they've been saying since the streaming movie feature was announced.

August 16 2007 at 6:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
required

Shannin, "For each $1 of monthly plan cost (excluding taxes), 1 hour of instant watching is included. For example, if you are on our 3 at-a-time (unlimited) plan, you pay $16.99 a month, and you have 17 hours of instant viewing time per month." - netflix.com

August 16 2007 at 5:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
required

I agree with rp. It's wrong to charge Mac users the same rate as PC users when PC users are getting a better product.

August 16 2007 at 5:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Shannin

the selection is crap,
also you only get an hour per $1 you spend, so when they release a good collection its going to be bad for people who want to watch alot of movies in one day.

August 16 2007 at 5:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mo

So, do you think ANY of the companies who say “Apple don't license their DRM” have actually _spoken_ to Apple about it?

Apple will license it, but the terms don't work the same way as Microsoft's DRM: you want to do FairPlay, you do the iTunes Store.

Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say “Apple do license their DRM, but we've not bothered our asses to get on the phone to them” or “Apple do license their DRM, but we don't want to do any kind of co-branding agreements and integrate with the iTunes store [which would reach both Mac and PC users, incidentally], even though it's what Mac users would expect”.

August 16 2007 at 5:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gg

Movie rentals in iTunes to watch on my AppleTV please!

@rp - you've got to be kidding us, right?

August 16 2007 at 4:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
WickDC

Your comments: Just an FYI, "Watch Now" works great in Parallels. Of course a lot to do for just one feature, but even on a Mini with only 512 megs of ram, once XP and IE get going, movies play just fine, even full screen.

August 16 2007 at 4:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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