Netflix Silverlight Opt In (Proceed with Caution)

Nov 3 2008

If you’ve wanted the Netflix Watch Instantly service on your Mac, there’s now a way to opt-in. But, be warned, this is a all-in no-turning-back procedure. Some caveats:

Once you switch to the new, Silverlight version of the Netflix player, you won’t be able to access the older, IE version.
You Netflix account will use the Microsoft Silverlight version on all machines.
Not all movies are currently available to watch using the Silverlight player.
During the beta, you may notice errors or lesser quality when streaming certain titles.
If you use a plugin for Netflix Watch Instantly with SageTV, Vista Media Center, Xbox 360 using VMCNetflix or any of the other HTPC programs, opting in will break that functionality. The new version will require a re-write to enable Netflix video playback.
The new player works on PCs and Intel-based Macs.
This is a preview release - bugs can and probably will surface.

I’m not opting in through my Netflix account as I use the SageTV Netflix plugin, but I was able to test this out using a friend’s account (primarily a OS X user) and can confirm it works. The streaming quality seemed noticeably worse under the Silverlight version, although fast forward, rewind and skipping around in the movie performed better in the new player. I was able to view Netflix Watch Instaly using Firefox 3 as well, but it doesn’t work in Opera. So, if you’re a Mac-only guy who hasn’t leveraged any of the customer-created plugins for Netflix Watch Instantly, and you’re okay with the above warnings… opt in to the Silverlight Netflix player.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

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10 Responses for "Netflix Silverlight Opt In (Proceed with Caution)"

Dave Zatz November 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am 1
I received access Thursday (thanks, Netflix PR!) and shot a Silverlight install video and brief walk-thru of the new player on Saturday. I didn’t get around to blogging it, but the content seems to fit well with Brent’s coverage so it’s attached above. I like the minimalist player - not sure if quality is worse than the previous player, as Brent experienced, but it’s surely better quality than Hulu and I appreciate the uncluttered UI (again, compared to Hulu).
Michael Portuesi November 3rd, 2008 at 11:57 am 2
How does this relate to the Netflix on TiVo announcement? I’ve read on some of the Mac blogs that the new Silverlight version has less content available at the moment than the old Windows Media version of the player.

Does anybody know what content will be accessible to TiVo users?

I assume Netflix wants to phase out the Windows Media version of the player eventually, since once you switch to the Silverlight version you can’t go back.
Dave Zatz November 3rd, 2008 at 12:38 pm 3
Michael, the web browser player technology should have no bearing on the TiVo announcement. Other than the video, in both cases, is protected by Microsoft DRM. Think of Silverlight as a Flash container equivalent in some ways, while the video content is based on Windows Media. I assume the entire Watch Instantly lineup will ultimately be available to all players/hardware.
Ivan Y November 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm 4
@ Dave: Roku said that when they’ll release HD at the end of the year, they’ll be using a different encoding than 360 and that library will be “same as or greater”, so perhaps there are going to be different catalogs for different devices/encodes.
Totoro November 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm 5
Dave,
I installed this on my new MacBook Al 2.0. It works, but the show I watched (30 Rock) had noticeable sync issues with sound (not a lot, enough to be jarring :p ) This was in a window (full screen had tearing/sync issues as well)

Does your SageTV experience have any issues with sound sync?
Brent November 6th, 2008 at 4:21 pm 6
Totoro,
That would be me with the SageTV setup. And I can’t try it within SageTV since the new Silverlight breaks the functionality in SageTV.

When I tried it out on a mac though I didn’t have any sound sync issues.
Spark November 8th, 2008 at 9:40 am 7
I used this last night to watch a movie with the kids on my Macbook Pro hooked to my 61″ dlp. Overall, video quality seemed higher than previous uses of Watch Instantly. The 61″ viewing clearly exacerbates any quality issues. I had no issues with sound. At about 10 minutes in, it stopped streaming my movie. I went back a screen and relaunched the movie and it picked up from where we left off without issue. Overall I was very happy for usage #1.
David Smith December 13th, 2008 at 4:33 pm 8
I just signed up for the beta and it sucks! The video quality is horrible. The screens are really choppy it drops thevideo feed. I have a 40MB connection on fiber so I know it is not my connection but the quality of netflix’s silverlights video. I wish i could go back to the original version. I had no idea that not all the videos are available on silverlight yet.So in short, i just shot myself in the leg until they can get their beta up to speed.

By the way this was on a dual core vista machine with 4GB of ram.
Kayla K. December 20th, 2008 at 2:57 am 9
Everything David Smith says happened to me too. I thought it was some problem with my computer or internet connection speed….. Glad I read this
Sabrina December 26th, 2008 at 8:48 pm 10
I do not have a TV so watch movies online through netflix. This ended up in me being forced to opt-in with Silverlight. Almost two weeks later after this forced transition, movies are still pixilated and sound and images are out of sink.
Most interestingly, though, Silverlight dumps the instant viewing movies as *.wmv and *.wma files on your harddrive by the gigabyte, ignoring the space limitation settings of the internet explorer.
Yes, this probably implies that Microsoft is making Netflix break the copyright laws with every movie studio that it distributes movies for.