Instant Watching
Posted on May 22, 2008
If you are a movie lover, one thing you probably don’t like is having to get in the car and drive somewhere, like to a theater or video store.
With the quality of systems available at home now, and the prices at the theater, you almost wonder if there will come a time when, like the drive-in movie, the theater will become a relic of the past. As people seem to become less gregarious, preferring to spend more time in the comfort of home than in the public (most have to do that all day anyway), movie watching has become a real home interest but if you want the latest you still got to go get it or go watch it.
If you rent movies from Netflix or Blockbuster or the like, you have to wait a day or two for your movie to arrive — and we don’t like waiting. It’s amazing how quickly our impatience level rises whenever we have access to something. I mean, these services have only been available a few short years and already a day is too long to wait.
You can always go with pay-per-view, but are pretty limited with selection and timing. Imagine, though, if you could watch any movie, any time, without budging from your sofa, by downloading it. All kinds of companies have been working to deliver this most wanted product — movies on demand, including Amazon.com, TiVo, Apple, Netflix, and several others.
Unfortunately, each service has issues. Internet download services offer instant gratification, but most require you to watch on your computer screen rather than on your TV. Set-top boxes like TiVo deliver movies to your TV, but erase your rented movies after only 24 hours.
This week, Roku and Netflix unveiled a little $100 box that aims to eliminate all of those drawbacks. Delivery to your TV straight from the Net with no 24-hour viewing window. Plus, with your monthly Netflix account, the movies are all free. As with the mail service, you can queue up two movies at a time, so you can sit and watch one right after another.
Netflix had been offering this service for awhile, but it’s one of those that has been PC only, no TV. Now the Roku box changes all that. They call this process Instant Watching. So now you can movie surf like you channel surf. Watch one for a few minutes, don’t like it, try another one.
Here are the details. You must have a high-speed Internet connection. No surprise on this one. I don’t think even the wishful dial-up folks expected otherwise. The unit can connect wired or wireless to your home network and it connects to your TV using most any kind of cables.
The video quality depends on the speed of your Internet connection. The clarity over slower hookups, like standard DSL, will disappoint you. If you have a fast cable modem, or high speed DSL like 3 or 6 Mb you get what Netflix calls ‘near-DVD quality’.
Now, here is the main failing of this service. While you are waiting for a DVD in the mail of a new release, what you watch on the Roku is from the older catalog of films. This device is at the bottom of the pecking order. It gets movies after they have made their rounds in the hotel, airline, DVD and pay-per-view settings. It gets them when movie channels like HBO and Starz get them, and sometimes even later, but you can watch the ones you want (from a selection of 10,000 or more), when you want.
Netflix sees its DVD-by-mail and Instant Watching features as two parts of one service. When movie newness and popularity matters, get them on DVD; when delivery speed matters, use Instant Watching. You know Hollywood isn’t going to let you sit and load up all the latest releases for $14.95 a month.
So the system doesn’t fall short because of technical problems, but rather legal and financial ones. If you accept it at what it is, then it is quite a move forward in movie viewing.
» Filed Under General, Internet, Television
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