Netflix Downloads: Coming to TVs in 2008

At least according to the official Netflix blog, that is. But will it involve an entirely new, dedicated component, or will it work with an existing box a la Amazon Unbox? And will the online movie selection get any better? Questions, questions.

Gizmodo spotted the Netflix blog post earlier this week, in which a Netflix engineer promises that the DVDs-by-mail company is "bringing Netflix to the TV in 2008." Unfortunately, that's all we get in the way of details (along with word that Netflix's video-streaming feature will get Mac and Firefox support starting next year).

So, what can we make of this? Of course, the Netflix set-top box rumors have been floating around since last summer; the thought was that you'd still have a movie queue, but that once you deleted a movie from your set-top box, a new one would download automatically overnight. And while Netflix execs were always careful to go easy on the details, many of us jumped ahead to scenarios where the company would just digitize all the DVDs in its massive library—in other words, we'd get the same selection online as we would over the mail.

That was the dream, but the reality is that any Netflix set-top box—whether it be a dedicated component or a service that piggybacks on, say, the Slingbox or the Xbox 360 (see this interesting speculative piece from the Motley Fool)—would suffer from the same sparse selection as we're seeing on CinemaNow, Movielink (recently acquired by Netflix rival/tormentor Blockbuster), iTunes, and the Xbox Video Marketplace. The big Hollywood studios, still terrified of piracy, are ever reluctant to get on board with movie downloads (and the recent hacking of Netflix's online movie-watching service sure didn't help matters).

So while I'm more than ready for Netflix to follow Amazon and iTunes into the living room, the reality is that we're still a long ways from the movie-download nirvana of clicking your way through an exhaustive library of titles. I've no doubt we'll get there, but patience doesn't come easily to us gadget hounds.

Related:
Netflix Download for Macs and TVs Coming in 2008 [Gizmodo]