Hands on with Netflix's New Online Video Service

I'm an old-school Netflix user from the very first days of the service, and I was delighted to hear that it was rolling out—after years of rumor—a way to view movies online, without the hassle of shipping discs in the mail. (I don't know about you, but mine arrive broken more often than I'd prefer.)

Today I got the chance to spend some time with the service, and so far I'm quite pleased. Here are some thoughts about how well it works, and areas where I'd love to see some improvement.

The service is free for all subscribers. If you're on the three-discs-a-month plan, you get 18 hours of online viewing time each month. And online it truly is: You have to watch videos in a browser window, using Netflix's proprietary viewing software. You can't download videos to your PC, burn them to disc, copy them to an iPod, or even watch them on a TV (unless you hook your PC up to it directly). This is strictly an online affair, so you can't take the movies with you on the road, either.

The software installed easily on one PC and not at all on another. My laptop continues to give me a bizarre error code that I haven't been able to resolve, but on my desktop, it took less than two minutes to be up and running. (Update: I updated Windows Media Player and installed the new Netflix player software and now the laptop works fine.)

Netflix currently has about 1,000 videos for viewing online. And while that's much better than services like iTunes (which has a whopping 250 movies now), the selection still feels thin. Of 460 movies in my rental queue, only 10 are available for online viewing, and none of those are major studio releases. If you're here looking for Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, don't hold your breath: Most of the releases are on the obscure side (I'm watching a documentary about Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue right now), but some classics (Chinatown) and bigger-budget films (The Sum of All Fears) are available. As another point of reference: Of the top 25 most-viewed titles so far, I've already seen 19 of them.

The video quality is surprisingly good. Shockingly good, really. After about a minute of initial buffering, I was playing full-screen video over a standard cable modem connection. I encountered no stuttering or buffering pauses, ever. You can pause the video, rewind it, jump ahead, or quit altogether. Only the portion you watch counts against your monthly allocation of viewing hours. The player has minimal frills. Aside from a play button and a slider for moving around within the video, you can adjust volume, and toggle between full screen and windowed mode. There are of course none of the typical DVD extras: No commentary tracks, extra subtitles, deleted scenes, etc.

Though I haven't spent long with it, so far I'm a huge fan of the service. I'm not sure I'd pay much extra for it unless all titles in the DVD catalog were online (I hate waiting for those "Very Long Wait" discs), but as a free add-on to my account, it's a great thing to have. I'm not sure how well it will work on a buggy hotel wireless connection (and since it won't install on my laptop, I may never find out), but I'm anxious to give it a try: No more traveling with a pouch full of DVDs? Sign me up.

I figure the biggest challenge will be getting a downloadable service running which people actually want to use. Amazon's Unbox has been a catastrophe, due to the onerous restrictions it puts on videos and how they are viewed. Can Netflix overcome the flubs that have plagued others to the point where online video has a bit of a bad reputation? We'll see, as the service rolls out to all subscribers over the next few months. 

Want to see an online demo of the service? Here's a great video demonstration.