LOS GATOS, Calif., July 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the leading Internet movie subscription service, today announced it will expand into Canada this fall offering unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed instantly to TVs and computers for one low monthly fee. The Canadian launch will mark the first availability of Netflix outside the United States.
Canadian Netflix members will be able to instantly watch a broad array of movies and TV episodes right on their TVs via a range of consumer electronics devices capable of streaming from Netflix, as well as watching on PCs and Macs.
In addition to representing its inaugural international market, Canada will also mark the first streaming-only service promoted by Netflix.
At the time of launch, the Netflix Canadian service will be available in English only, but the company said it expects to add French language capability over time.
I believe iTunes has been falling into a different area because they're actually selling you the program, not renting or letting you view it. When iTunes switches over to an all rental model for television it will be interesting to see what happens to their selection.
This is a legacy media sales issue, there are some great articles online about it. If they buy the rights to broadcast a program in Canada they don't want you selling someone else the rights to also broadcast it.
Apple is in the business of selling media, not streaming it. Licensing and regulatory rules on sales are completely different than those on broadcasting and streaming. Also, Apple sells TV episodes for $1.99 each. That's a big jump from a flat $10 monthly fee.
You should note that Apple has decided to embrace Netflix instead of fighting it. For now, it looks like Apple stays away from the subscription model and sticks with pay per views.
"We don't see ourselves as competing with cable and satellite TV," confirmed Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO of Netflix at the Canadian launch event this morning in Toronto. "Think of us as a bicycle compared to cable/satellite as the car. Sometimes it's good to take a bike to get somewhere, but it's really supplemental to the car."
I will probably wait to sign up for a few weeks, when the new Apple TV comes out. I want my free month to occur when I can watch it on my big screen, to see if the quality is there before I have to pay for it. The selection isn't the greatest, but it isn't any worse than what you get from Movie Central, which I will be dropping once I sign up for Netflix.
I think my favourite media quote so far was from the Globe and Mail where the author obviously doesn't actually use any of the existing sources.
'It also remains to be seen whether consumers will pay a monthly subscription fee for Netflix since cable companies and TV network websites are already offering some free on-demand content.'
No kidding. I did a search for 2 OLD, OLD favorites, Ferris Bueller and Top Gun. Both came up as unavailable. Then I did a search for recent TV shows like The Shield, The Office and 24. Also unavailable. Now those shows are still fairly recent so I'll cut Netflix some slack there, but if they don't have agreements in place to stream FB and TG then that likely means they are missing a LOT of the old (and newer) favorites. This is a far cry from my utopian "mousepotato" vision of being able to login and watch pretty much ANY movie ("A grade") ever made.
Honestly, I just want a service in Canada that offers access to first run (or very recent stuff) for $.99 an episode. Maybe that's what Apple has in store. I know there are all kinds of Bittorrent, underground and newsgroup sites where you can download the poop for free, but honestly I'm fine with paying a small fee for it. Just like I am with iTunes if there is a song I really want on my MP3.
I had a chance to use the US Netflix on the Xbox last year before it was geo-locked.
The one thing I will miss is the Instant Queue. The canuck version of netflix right now is a "Search and Watch" website with Recommendations trying to help you out. With the US version you could queue stuff up on your "watch list", sit down on the couch and browse what you queued. Because there is only so many gems in the pile this made it easy to do some searching midweek to queue up weekend viewing...
The other cool thing about the Instant Queue south of the border is you could share them via RSS feeds. So a few friends could swap RSS links to their queue and any gems friends found you could be notified of via your favorite RSS reader.
Here's hoping they release this function to us. That could be why the Xbox Netflix app is releasing later this fall as it was totally driven off your Instant Queue.
I got the email announcement from Netflix today. Decided to sign up for the free trial. The sign up was easy and problem free. Unfortunately, their player uses Silverlight. No biggie but it's yet another piece of MS bloatware I didn't necessarily want. The interface is Ok but browser based. I'd rather have integration with a media player of my choice. Again, not a big issue but it makes it that more difficult to use with the TV and media remote.
Next the real test. The interface is Ok. Blew it up to about four times normal size so it filled the screen and was readable on the TV. It wanted me to rate 50 movies to set my preferences. Most of the movies presented were so bad I never want to watch them so it amounted to actually rating two or three movies a page. Gave up after about 5 pages. Played a couple of trailers. So far so good. Played a movie. Picture quality is good but the sound is PCM instead of DD. About 5 minutes in the screen turns red and it says it is adjusting the bit rate. I press Ok. Another 5 minutes pass and it says the connection to the server is lost. End of playback.
Signed up here as well. They send out a disc for the Wii so I ordered that, and the PS/3 you can download right off PSN. The Xbox however, what the heck?
I really want to get it working in Media Center however.
Well it will be a frosty Friday before I subscribe to this service. I had it in the US while in Florida. The movies were 3 months or older,plus DVDS by mail.
The movies on the Canadian site are 6 months or older or you have never heard of them.
If I want to watch old dvds I will borrow them from friends
Frankly I am extremely disappointed in the offering I expected more. Perhaps Zip ca service will be better if they evey get it off the ground. It was scheduled for a June 2010 release which never happened
The other issue is how much would I pay on my internet now that rogers has capped the downloads
I just signed up about an hour ago and have been trying it on on my PS3. The PS3 app works well. If you like Foreign films or documentaries, there is a decent selection of those, but yeah, if you're a mainstream hollywood knuckle-dragger the selection still needs some work.
I did sign up for the trial. Quality is decent on the computer, and pretty good on my iPhone (although I have yet to test over 3G).
Selection is definitely disappointing, but that's a moot point now because just about everybody's selection in Canada is bad since we compare to the US, where EVERYTHING is available. Not sure how this'll ever change or get better.
I already called to provide feedback on one thing and would encourage others to do so as well. I don't like the fact that my recently viewed items are sitting on a list visible as soon as one logs in. If I set up my PS3 or Wii on my account, i don't want my kids resuming play on material that isn't age-appropriate. The US Netflix site allows for multiple profiles to be set up on a single account but this isn't possible in Canada. Rep was very friendly and welcomed the feedback. I hope they implement this because it could change my mind about subscribing long term.
I will also have to test something on a bigger screen at home to truly evaluate quality.
I had similar experiences with selection. Looked up a popular 1989 BBC TV series that is available from Zip and at the local library. Netflix had it listed as unavailable.
I think the poster was referring to a TV episode for 0.99$/episode. And i think that is what Apple is offering through iTunes.
I would go for TV series at $0.99 an episode, especially if they are uninterrupted and commercial free. They are streamed free with commercials, so paying anything for them is a ripoff. The iTunes price I saw for TV episodes was $1.99 which is way too expensive if you watch more than one a day. Cable or satellite is a better deal at that price.
I just tried a mixed basket of movies, none available: Victory, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starship Troopers, Blues Brothers, Logan's Run...a real variety, but no joy.
I suspect they did a deal with Superchannel or at least the same studios Superchannel has deals with (i.e. MGM). I had a Superchannel subscription that I cancelled recently, and a lot of the titles on Netflix are the same. There's some good classics and independent/foreign films anyway.
I'm going to at least try the first month out. I've got an iPhone, PS3, Wii and computer, and I like how you can resume playback from any device.
I signed up today and watched one movie. Quality is better than the the pirated stuff on the the internet but not as good as the DVD. whats the streaming speed? Must be less than 2Mb per sec. How does one find the streaming speed on silverlight?
Selection is dismal as others have stated and therefore will not continue after the trial period.
For $7.99/month for all you can eat, I don't have any complaints. I'm not expecting miracles at that price. I suspect the Netflix library will grow bigger and there's enough content to keep me and my family busy for awhile.
That worked, thank-you. Watching Secret Life of Bees now!
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