Netflix “Watch Instantly” Now Available to Mac Users
In true trick-or-treat fashion, Netflix announced Friday that the first beta phase of its new streaming player is over. Mac (and PC) users can now opt in to use the new Silverlight player as part of the next beta phase.
Existing customers can simply visit www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin to opt in to the new player. After a one-button click and a quick download of Silverlight, you’re all set to go. However, there are a few things to be aware of before you make the jump.
- The player is still in beta, so there may be bugs.
- Not all movies are available to watch in Silverlight. There’s no mention as to how many movies are ready to view, but after opting in I didn’t notice a radical reduction in the number of titles available. I’m assuming they covered the most popular titles and are leaving “High School Musical 3 1/2″ until later.
- The new player only works on Intel-based Macs.
- Once you opt in, you must use Silverlight on all your machines to access the “watch instantly” feature. There will no longer be a difference between watching it on your Mac and watching it on your PC.
Having spent a few hours with the new player last night and this morning I am very impressed. Playback has been flawless, video quality is about the same, and the Silverlight interface is impressive and smooth. I haven’t encountered any bugs yet when fast forwarding or switching to full screen mode. I just hope that this jump to a single platform will mean Netflix can now concentrate on improving the selection of “watch instantly” titles.
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#1 Brian says:And indeed my G4 PowerBook (2004) gets the message “Our apologies — instant watching is not supported for your operating system.” The PPC processor is being marginalized slowly but surely: it’s reported that OS 10.6 will require an Intel processor. I like to keep things that work well until they wear out and die, and I was hoping that to be another year or two for this machine. Guess I’ll just keep getting DVDs from Netflix for the time being.
#2 Steve says:On my intel machine running 10.5.4 it says, “Silverlight 2 may not be installed on a power pc”. So i installed it with pacifist and it crashes safari every time. Seems like typical M$ software to me.
#3 Cameron says:It doesn’t work for me, and I’m on an intel Imac. It still says they will have it by the end of the year.
#4 Brian Warren says:Worked great for me. Very pleased with the results. Not super stoked about installing Silverlight, but it’s worth it to me. Well done!
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