Netflix beamed direct to your living room
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I am, and have been, a huge fan of the concept behind the Netflix service. I love the ability to pay a reasonable fee every month to be able to watch as many movies as I’d like. The problem for me is that I don’t truly have access to the 90,000 titles that are offered. I really only have access to the three movies delivered from the top of my queue. This all may change with the introduction of the Netflix set-top box.
If I was hanging out alone every night I might be able to jump through my queue without any hiccups, however, I spend most of my time with my girlfriend or hanging out with the guys at the house. Because we all have different tastes in movies, my queue is often neglected. Even when we decide on a movie, I can really only add it to my queue. Best case scenario, I have it in two days. Unfortunately, I always already have three movies checked out, so unless I’m willing to return a movie I haven’t watched yet, I’m still never going to receive the next film in the queue. For example, I’ve had the same three movies checked out for about four months now.
The Netflix set-top box could take the beauty of having 90,000 titles available, and remove the inconvenience of the queue. There’s no official word yet on the price of the box or the price of service with the box, but just imagine the possibilities. You’re hanging out with some friends watching some TV and up pops a DVD ad for a movie you all missed in theaters. Rather than adding it to the queue and waiting the two days for the disc to arrive, you just pull out the remote and you’re watching the movie within a matter of minutes instead of days.
Now netflix already has a feature called “Watch Now” which allows similar functionality to your PC, but the catalog and number of hours of content you can watch is limited. And you’re forced to watch it at your computer. Hopefully, when the set-top box becomes available, the restrictions on the content will disappear. It they do, and the price is right, I’ll definitely have to pick up one myself.
posted by Christopher Schnese
