Netflix to Offer Mac Video Streaming By End of Year

[MacRumors]

Netflix posted an announcement about new content available for streaming, including new movies and television shows:

Today we announced an agreement with Starz Play that adds around 1,000 choices that you can watch instantly today, and will add another 1,500 by the end of the year. Movies include “No Country for Old Men”, “Ratatouille,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Superbad,” and more.
...
Recently we also added a lot of new CBS, Disney and NBC TV episodes including of CSI, NCIS, Numbers, Jericho, Hannah Montana and Heroes.

Netflix is best known for its mail-order DVD rental service but also includes unlimited video streaming with their fixed monthly plans starting at $9/month. Netflix also recently launched a $100 set top box that allows customers to stream video straight to their television.

The blog post also confirms that Mac support for streaming video will arrive by the end of the year:

And, for all of you Mac users (of which I am one) we’ve been busy working getting a solution that will allow you to watch instantly on your Mac. So hang in there - we’ll have something for you by the end of the year.

Netflix had previously revealed planned Mac support in January 2008 during Q4 financial results.


Article Link

 

[Full of Win]

Woo Hoo... been waiting for this

 

[Clayne]

New notebooks?

 

[ajleonard]

also been waiting for a long time.

 

[heyp]

finally... so did they end up using silverlight?

 

[chaseardoin7]

yay.

this is exciting news.


i actually just ordered a Roku this morning. Anyone have any reviews for it?

 

[theheadguy]

This is the competition we need! I love Netflix and this would be absolutely perfect. I think the Mac Mini is generally a bad deal but this encourages another look at it.

 

[bondjw07]

Netflix on AppleTV now?

I wonder if this means that we can see AppleTV hacks to get the video on there? Anyone think this will work?

 

[decksnap]

Do you think this will be silverlight/Intel Mac only?

 

[justflie]

I have a friend who installed VMWare Fusion and Windows XP specifically to watch Netflix on his Mac. Whoops...

Oh well, I guess it will at least tide him over til the end of the year. It seems like more and more companies are starting to pay attention to Mac support. That's the best news.

 

[Roessnakhan]

So by the end of the year I'll be able to stream Netflix movies on my Mac AND my XBOX. Epic.

 

[Shasterball]

I'm psyched. Also psyched to stream to my Xbox 360.

 

[yrsonicdeath]

this is exciting news.


i actually just ordered a Roku this morning. Anyone have any reviews for it?

I've had the roku box since June. Honestly I haven't really used it lately because I've just about exhausted the online content that I'm interested in seeing. It works as expected though and has provided me with a lot of spur of the moment viewing without having my computer powered on. I definitely don't regret buying it.

 

[krye]

Holding breathe. Fingers crossed. I'm tired of firing up Fusion to watch stuff in IE.

 

[METOO999]

I streamed a movie one night from my Macbook through WinXP and the sound came out as mono no matter which movie I tried. I have it hooked up with an optical adapter to my receiver. My audio settings were normal - I get Dolby 5.1 on regular video files from my HDD. The video quality was okay.

More likely, I will be streaming from my Xbox 360 with the fall dashboard update. No more dragging the Macbook next to the LCD and hooking everything up.

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

Gotta love having choices.

 

[sleepingworker]

I love using Netflix and as a Mac owner I felt it was almost punitive because "Apple does not license their DRM solution to third parties" according to the Netflix website. I was actually envious of my Windows friends who could watch films on their PC's with a simple click ... legally.

Very happy this will be settled soon.

 

[pavelbure]

finally some movies worth watching.

 

[creator2456]

Just making the switch from BlockBuster to Netflix because of the Xbox 360 streaming and this just makes my decision even more worth while.

 

[sonnyjames]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

What about closed captioning support? Netflix is missing out in millions of consumers who are deaf due to no closed captioning support on PC and their set top box.

 

[jb60606]

Amazon beat them to it - although Amazon lets you stream to TIVO as well.

 

[Peel]

I wonder if this means that we can see AppleTV hacks to get the video on there? Anyone think this will work?

This is my wish as well. Hopefully won't take someone too long to pull off.

 

[happydude]

would be nice if netflix offered movies worth streaming . . .

 

[milo]

I wonder if this means that we can see AppleTV hacks to get the video on there? Anyone think this will work?

Just what I was going to ask.

Apple should work with NF (and many other streaming companies) on this one.

This would probably be enough to finally push me to buy an aTV.

But even if Apple/NF doesn't support it, doesn't it have a good shot via something like Boxee?

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

Anyone know what codec/format Netflix will use? is it a stream like Flash video? is it downloadable?