

Netflix Streaming App Coming to iPad - MykalMorton
http://mashable.com/2010/04/01/netflix-ipad/

======
gr366
Bear in mind that Netflix streaming doesn't typically include the latest
popular releases (hey, that's what iTunes Movie Store is for, right?) However,
they do have a pretty decent selection of titles. At the moment, just over 25%
of my nearly 50 queued movies are available for streaming.

------
johnrob
... and why didn't they already launch an iPhone app?

------
dpritchett
The Netflix app appears to be free unlike the Hulu app. Netflix already
charges $5-10/mo. for access to their library so they can get away with
offering this service at no additional cost.

Hulu is behind what with their users having grown accustomed to free content.
Selling "mobile Hulu, only $X/month" is going to be a tough sell.

------
kwamenum86
This is a game changer for me. I told myself before that there is no way I
would waste money on one of these. Now...maybe. I'm starting to get a feel for
what is possible.

------
ktf
And yet there's still no Linux support? At this point, I can watch streaming
movies on every device I own _except_ my computer.

------
ashishbharthi
Amazon Kindle App and now Netflix Streaming App. iPad is just becoming sweeter
and sweeter!!

------
marknutter
This is the iPad killer app or an April Fool's joke.

~~~
zephjc
I basically don't pay attention to stories on April Fools day - to the few I
do, I just wait and see if there is any follow up the next day.

------
jsm386
I wonder how this is going to work...My 1st gen MacBook (with 2GB RAM) cannot
handle my Netflix stream (1.21 MB/s maxed out on Time Warner). It chokes every
few seconds.

~~~
ktf
Yeah... ever since the switch to Silverlight, Netflix streaming has been
unwatchable even on my fairly up-to-date desktop machine.

------
tseabrooks
If I get the 3G will AT&T let me stream my netflix movies over 3g?

~~~
maukdaddy
Probably not. I doubt you'd get sufficient speeds even if they allowed it.

------
jsdalton
This is already possible via any netbook or tablet -- via the browser, at
netflix.com. I've been watching streaming Netflix videos this way on my laptop
for a long while.

Are we honestly going to get hyped up about every last feature of existing
services that an iPad application replicates?

~~~
glhaynes
What you're seeing is that people are starting to realize that this device can
do the vast majority of things that people want to do on their computers. And
with nearly none of the time/cognitive/frustration burden of a "computer" --
notice how "normals" don't think of the iPad as a "computer": they think of it
as... well, an iPad. Normals don't want computers but they want what computers
can do.

------
tvon
FWIW, it's real, it's in the iTunes App Store. (iTunes link:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/netflix/id363590051?mt=8> )

~~~
bmalicoat
I love how it has 57 five star reviews without anyone actually having it yet.

~~~
tvon
iTunes reviews are so completely useless.

------
cbryan
I'm wondering what technology Netflix is going to use to stream video to their
app and how they're going to address studio's security concerns. IIRC, they
were using Silverlight because it supported some encryption scheme that made
everyone happy.

Hm, looks like Silverlight can run on the iPhone:
<http://mashable.com/2009/11/27/silverlight-iphone/>

~~~
mortenjorck
Whoa, what? From the article:

 _What’s even more interesting is that this wasn’t a skunkworks proof-of-
concept project, Microsoft got the OK from Apple. This is in stark-contrast to
Apple’s stance on Adobe Flash, which currently has plans for all mobile
platforms except for the iPhone._

So according to Mashable, Apple is indeed allowing a _runtime environment,_
running _interpreted code_ on the iPhone, in direct contravention of the SDK
guidelines (unlike Flash CS5, which is compiling native IPA binaries with
nothing interpreted at runtime). Very weird.

~~~
wfarr
"Then, using HTML 5’s <video> tag, Silverlight is able to communicate a
QuickTime request to the IIS server, which then decodes the MPEG-2 v8 file
dynamically and starts streaming it to the iPhone.

This is extremely similar to how YouTube content currently works with the
iPhone. Because Silverlight already supports GPU acceleration (a feature that
is coming to future versions of Flash Player 10), battery life and overall
performance has the potential to be quite strong."

Also from the article.

