Why make a streaming service Netflix' first offering outside the US? 'Tricky' postal systems, says CEO Reed Hastings.

Now, this is a bit of an odd one. Most western nations already have DVD-by-mail systems that work just as well as (or better) than Netflix. So I don't think 'tricky' postal systems are the real reason behind this move. What then do Netflix intend to achieve by focusing on streaming content outside of the US? Is it just a matter of flexibility? More subscription options?

But again, why outside the US? Netflix's brand recognition outside the US is not great.

Hastings and Netflix claim there is still seemingly enough demand for such a service, with 42% of their subscribers watching at least "15 minutes of one TV show or movie in the last quarter." Readwriteweb point to the growing adoption of Hulu and BBC's iPlayer for TV, Pandora and Spotify for music -- but I don't think it's quite the same thing for movies.

People like using their big, wide-screen televisions. They like using their expensive sound set-ups. Set-top boxes that stream content from the Web are still relatively hard to come by and not readily adopted by consumers. Then there's the matter of bandwidth: streaming a movie in high-resolution with a surround-sound audio track is still way beyond the capacity of most American and European Internet connections.

Netflix haven't yet announced which country will get to trial their streaming-movie service, but it'll be interesting to see which one they choose -- and if it will indeed be successful.

[via Readwriteweb]

You probably knew Microsoft was officially launching Windows 7 today after months of beta testing. But that doesn't mean that CEO Steve Ballmer didn't have a few surprises up his sleeve at launch event.

Some of the coolest new features weren't actually from Microsoft. Partners including CBS, Netflix, and Amazon introduced new applications that work with Windows 7.

CBS content including full-length TV shows will now be available directly from Windows 7 Media Center. At a time when Fox, NBC, and ABC are making streaming content available through the Hulu web site, CBS has been holding out. And now maybe we know why. While Hulu Desktop presents a pretty decent 10-foot interface for watching Hulu content, the usage agreement says you're technically not supposed to plug in a TV to use the application. Windows 7 Media Center, on the other hand, is all about making the experience of watching PC content on a big screen TV easier.

Microsoft also announced that there will be an updated version of the Netflix streaming video app for Windows 7 Media Center as well as integration with the Zune video podcast library and content from MSN and MSNBC.

Meanwhile, Amazon is introducing a new Kindle application for Windows 7. It supports multi-touch gestures and allows you to read Kindle eBooks with color photos and supports pinching to zoom. So if you don't feel like dropping $260 on a physical Kindle, it looks like you can turn your Windows 7 notebook or tablet into an eBook reader capable of handling content from the Kindle store... albeit one with much shorter battery life than the Kindle eBook reader.

Today's announcement shows that Amazon is expanding its Kindle ecosystem well beyond dedicated devices. The company also offers an iPhone version of the Kindle reader. The Kindle for PC application will be available in November.

[via SlashGear]

For the past few years Netflix has been dangling a $1 million prize in front of geeks willing to attempt to come up with a better movie recommendation algorithm than the one Netflix was using. The goal was to improve the Netflix recommendations by 10%. Last month, two teams topped the 10% mark, and it's likely that one of them will win the prize.

In the meantime, Netflix is already looking ahead. In a blog post, Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt says the winner of the $1 million prize will be announced in September, and that Netflix is planning a sequel.

There's no word on how much money Netflix will offer this time around, but the company is putting time limits on the contests this time. Instead of competing to improve the accuracy of Netflix recommendations by a certain percentage, Netflix will offer prizes to the teams with the best results after 6 months and 18 months.

[via CNET]

It wasn't that long ago that you had to go to ABC.com (or a shadier part of the internet) if you wanted to stream TV shows from ABC in your web browser. But recently ABC's parent company Disney signed a deal with Hulu to carry programs including Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Defying Gravity, Castle, and Desperate Housewives. And now ABC has signed a similar deal with Netflix.

Some shows, are available starting this week, and Netflix will roll out additional ABC/Disney shows in the following months. Of course, only paying Netflix subscribers can stream videos from the Netflix web site. For the rest of us (in the United States anyway), the Hulu deal is more exciting. But probably the most exciting thing is the fact that you can now watch ABC programming on two different web sites that lack the ABC.com video player's incredibly annoying interface.

[via NewTeeVee]

The Netflix Prize Contest, a million-dollar challenge to improve the accuracy of the Netflix recommendation algorithm by 10%, has finally ended after close to three years. One team, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, claimed victory by showing a result of better than 10%, which kicked off a 30-day period where other teams would have a chance to top the leading score and win the million. That period has now ended, with another team, The Ensemble, apparently beating BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos by a fraction of a percentage point.

According to the leaderboard, the Ensemble submitted its potential winning entry just 20 minutes after BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos made its final test. The score is 10.10% for Ensemble and 10.09% for BKPC, but the results are now going to judges for testing and verification before the prize is awarded. As a condition of the contest, the teams agree to reveal their algorithms and make them available for Netflix to use in improving its recommendation system.

Back in 2006, Netflix launched a contest to improve its movie recommendation algorithm. To win the Netflix Prize, a team has to improve the accuracy of the Netflix movie recommendations by 10% or more. The prize is a million dollars. Now it looks like one team may have won the contest, with a score of 10.05%. Although several teams had come close, nobody was able to hit the 10% mark until members of four top teams joined forces. It's not over yet, though. Other teams now have 30 days to best the 10,05% result, with the prize going to the best overall score.

BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, the first team to top 10%, includes researchers from Yahoo and AT&T, and many of the team members have collected Netflix's Yearly Progress Prize for their attempts in previous years. The rules of the contest require that the winning team explain how their algorithm works, and allow Netflix to use their work. This victory may have come sooner than Netflix expected: the contest was scheduled to run until 2011 if no one could come up with a suitable solution before then.

People have been hacking together ways to watch streaming videos from Netflix using Windows Media Center since early last year. But now Microsoft and Netflix have rolled out an official Netflix application for Windows Vista Media Center.

In other words, Netflix subscribers can browse through the 12,000 streaming titles available in the Netflix "watch instantly" library and watch them from the comfort of a couch using Microsoft's 10 foot interface and a media center remote control.

Users can also manage their DVD rental queue from Windows Media Center. The feature is powered by Microsoft Silverlight, so you'll need to have that installed on your media center system. It won't work with Media Center Extenders, but you can continue to stream movies via an Xbox 360 if you have an Xbox LIVE Gold membership.

Netflix has been a pioneer in the online retail space by providing automated recommendation services that can help you find items that you might like based on your previous video rentals, ratings, and other data. But for the past few years, Netflix has been trying to make its algorithm at least a little bit better through the Netflix Prize contest, which offers cash in exchange for significant improvements to the company's recommendation engine.

And apparently that bounty has been yielding positive results, because Netflix announced this week that it's changed the recommendation system based on improvements submitted through the Netflix Prize contest.

The new algorithm works better for users that rate movies. The system will now predict how many stars you would give movies that you havent' already watched, and that data will affect the movies that are displayed on different personalized sections of the Netflix web site, including the "Movies You'll Love" section.

[via AppScout]

Over the last few days, Hulu has pulled its streaming TV and movie content from TV.com and Boxee. The move has sparked a lot of criticism, and a lot of theories about what's actually going on. It's clear from the attitude Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is taking that this wasn't his idea. Rather, content owners seem to have requested the move. So what are they up to? Boxee and TV.com were allowing users to watch videos using the same terms as Hulu: The ads remained intact, so content owners should have been getting paid either way.

PaidContent speculates that the TV.com dispute might have been over the rights to display CBS videos on Hulu. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports today that cable companies are considering launching their own streaming video services as a value added proposition for subscribers.

Now Netflix CEO Reed Hasting is hinting that his company might launch a streaming video-only service later this year or early in 2010. Right now if you want to watch streaming videos from Netflix you need to pay at least $8.99 for a plan where the company will send you one DVD at a time using that old fashioned mail doohickey.

The rumors are true: Netflix is beta-testing a new a streaming movie player based on Microsoft Silverlight. As you may have read on Download Squad earlier this week, the new Silverlight-based player is compatible with Microsoft's DRM scheme, which means that, yes, you can finally watch Netflix instantly on your Mac. For Windows users, the player may be an upgrade, but for Mac users, it's a whole new feature.

To try the new player, you'll have to opt in. The first time you try to watch a movie, you'll be prompted to install Silverlight if you don't already have it. From there, you're good to go. Netflix warns that once you opt in, you can only use the Silverlight player, even on other machines. They also mention that the selection of movies for the new player is limited, but I didn't have trouble finding or playing any of the movies I tested.

It's been about 4 years since TiVo and Netflix announced they were working together to stream video to TiVo set top boxes. Since then, Netflix has developed technology that lets you watch videos on a PC, and more recently a Mac, without waiting for a DVD to arrive in the mail. Heck, even the Xbox 360 got more Netflix love than TiVo this year.

But apparently good things come to those who wait. And wait. And wait. Because today TiVo and Netflix have finally announced plans to begin rolling out the "watch instantly" feature to TiVo set top boxes.

Here's how it works. You'll need to be a paying TiVo and Netflix subscriber to use the service. But if you meet those requirements, you'll be able to browse a library of 12,000 movies and TV episodes from your couch using a TiVo Remote control.

The service will only be available to TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD users. Older TiVo units don't have the hardware to handle the video codecs Netflix is using to encode the video.

We recently reported on Netflix' decision to get rid of their profile feature, a decision that was not at all popular with customers. Here at Download Squad, we got several comments bemoaning the company's poor judgment and threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the service. Apparently, our readers were not alone. Thanks to pressure from calls, emails and petitions, Netflix has realize their error of their ways and agreed to keep profiles.

Today, Netflix users received this email:

"You spoke and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint you.

-Your friends at Netflix"

This is completely brilliant on the part of Netflix. They're going to get more goodwill from listening to users and keeping profiles than they ever lost by theatening to take them away. For users, nothing has changed, but the public perception of Netflix is bound to go up, now.

Netflix users are in an uproar, and rightfully so.

If you're not familiar with what Netflix is, then sorry...please move along.

Kidding...you can rent movies online, and you can create a queue of what you want to see, and they'll mail them to your house as they're available. It's like an autopilot feature and it frakkin rocks.

A few months ago the company put out an even cooler feature that let Netflix account holders create multiple queues under one account. So basically your baby daughter, mom, uncle Steve, and your parrot Whiskers could have their own queue of movies that they want to see.

Such a time saver, such a great function that really reminds you why you use and love (and pay for) Netflix.

Don't go and try to sign up just for that feature though, because Netflix just announced that they're taking it away.

For about as long as we can remember, folks have been talking about "the future," when there won't be any real difference between your TV and your computer. You'll be able to walk into the living room and read web pages or watch online videos on your flat panel display just as easily as you could in your office.

Well, we've got a secret for you: The future is already here. Kind of. It's surprisingly easy to hook your computer up to a television set these days, either with a video-out card or a Windows Media Extender. And if you've got Windows Vista, odds are you've got Windows Media Center, which is a 10-foot interface for accessing your audio, video, and picture collections. And now, thanks to a third party plugin you can even use Windows Media Center to watch streaming video from Netflix (assuming you have a Netflix account).

MyNetflix is a free plugin for Windows Vista Media Center that lets you manage your queue. And most importantly, it lets you browse and watch streaming video using the Netflix "watch now" service. Only a portion of the Netflix library is available for streaming, and good luck finding new releases. But we'd much rather watch old movies on our TV than new ones on our laptop.

[via Chris Lanier]

Sure, Apple may have launched digital movie rentals from the iTunes Store, but Netflix lets you watch videos for free. Well, free if you happen to already have a monthly subscription for their DVD-by-mail service. But while iTunes videos play on a Mac, PC, or Apple TV set top box, right now you can only watch Netflix videos on a PC. That's because the company uses Windows Media DRM to keep you from saving a copy of the streaming videos.

But Netflix is working on a Mac compatible version of its online video service. Silicon Alley Insider reports that during the company's recent earnings call, Netflix announced that Mac support could be coming sometime in 2008. Of course, there's a good 11 months and a few days left in 2008. And since Netflix didn't offer specifics, we're going to go out on a limb and say you might not see Mac support until leaves have grown on the trees and then started to change color. But we'd love to be proven wrong.