Movie rentals... What a hassle, first get out of your comfortable home, go to the video store then hope they have the movie you want, pay and then when you're done you have to return it. At least the DVD made sure you don't have to rewind the tape anymore. Fortunately in more and more countries video rentals by post are becoming common. By picking movies from a list on a website you get your movies conveniently at home. Still you need to return them, can't watch your favorite movie at the moment you would like to and you still have to hope the DVD is physically available when they need to ship it to you.
Video On Demand is the keyword here, this should solve all the problems above. By making online movies available as an internet stream the physical part is gone, shipping time is gone and you can just watch the movies whenever you like without having to leave your house. But it requires a fast internet connection and there have to be companies offering it, at a reasonable price.
Till now VoD (Video on Demand) never really took off, but Netflix is currently offering a $99 box that allows its customers to play ten thousands of movies on the TV instantly, with no extra charge besides their normal monthly fee.
The box is developed by Roku, a Californian start-up which you might know for its streaming internet music players (e.g. the Soundbrigde sold by the Pinnacle brand).
According to the people who have tried the device it is very easy to use and has excellent picture and sound quality, certainly compared to other competitors and all for the reasonable price of $100. Still Netflix only offers 10,000 movies trough the box, which is only a small part of the about 100,000 titles the company has in its inventory and most of the 10,000 are five year old (or older) which is thanks to the way Hollywood studios sell their rights to its products.
Netflix customers who have plans that cost at least $8.99 a month will have access to an unlimited number of movies over the Internet. A fast internet connection is required, the device has no hard disk so it needs to stream it directly from the net, the company recommends at least 1.5 Mbit.
Anyone going for this? Us Europeans will probably have to wait years before we get decent VoD...
No thanks. Marginal SD quality and even worse audio quality. Nothing close to the quality of a physical DVD. And let's not forget the DRM-crippled content.
The lack of a HDD for buffering or storage makes the box even less interesting. Even my 8Mb cable internet can often drop below 1.5 Mb, so the box really needs a substantial buffer capability. The ability to download now and watch later is a MUST-HAVE at least for me. But the quality, or lack of it, is the killer. These are low bitrate WMV files.
So, let me see if I understand this correctly. I have to pay $99 for the box AND the $8.99 a months for compressed movies that are older than the brown stains on my boxer shorts?
What do you mean CDan on DRM??????? This is live streaming no DRM at all on that I imagine?
I have Netflix and mailing their DVDs is a decent idea, except on weekends and holidays, when you either have no movie or you are stuck with the same movie for 3 or more days. As for the Instant viewing, as they call it, it has two good points. One, it is always available if you have an internet connection, Two, there is no time limit on when you have to finish watching it, unlike Comcast's On Demand service. The list of negatives is longer, First, you have to use IE to view it, their viewer will not work with Firefox, Second, they have a limited number of movies available, Three, some of the movies are available for instant viewing, but not on DVD, Four, there is no choice of Full screen or Letterbox, Five, there is no way to turn on subtitles or caption coding.(as an aside I had to watch one movie where everyone was speaking Chinese)
Netflix has a few drawbacks, but for what I pay I don't have high expectations. However, even if they fix those drawbacks, I am unlikely to pay $99 for a box, maybe $49, why should I pay $99 for a box that only does one thing. 
@DukeNukem;
"...older than the brown stains on my boxer shorts?"
Dewd, WTF?!? Better learn to wipe properly! 
@ Hypnosis4U2NV
"Dewd, WTF?!? Better learn to wipe properly!"
I thought I was doing it right. I even used both sides.
Knowing that the REAL DukeNukem did not post those comments brings me a huge sigh of relief..
Thanks for coming out the closet anyway..Top news
Our Community messages
Happy Birthday to you fj2002 
Crabbyappleton thank you for your reaction in the news section. 
Scorpio721 just logged in, Good to see you back!