AfterDawn: News

Netflix streaming service available on Macs

Rental giant Netflix has announced that Mac users can finally use the "Watch Instantly" service on their computers, however it will only work on Macs based on Intel chips.

For now, the updated service “will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers,” but as Apple is expected to keep Intel chips in their Macs for the future, future Mac users should be happy with the service.



The service is built on Microsoft’s Silverlight software and Mac users will have to download a Silverlight player to play Netflix's extensive streaming library.

The company did add however that about 70 percent of their subscribers with Macs have Intel chipsets.

"Watch Instantly" has been available for Windows users since early 2007.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 27 Oct 2008 15:38

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• 3 comments

• jookycola

  That's good news. Now if they'd get it together and fianlly release it for 360 and/or PS3 i'd be really happy.

  27.10.2008 17:33 #1

• relffy

  I have been useing Spunway.com for over a year now and they have these guys beat, hands down.

  9.11.2008 21:45 #2

• Gneiss1

  NetFlix, whose DVDs I've enjoyed watching for five years, could now allow me to watch these same DVDs by download. But I shall never be able to. There is absolutely no technical or ethical reason for this; and I came here to find how to buffer my 1.5 Mbits/sec stream to attain the 3.0 Mbits/sec quality NetFlix claims is necessary for DVD quality.
  
  Not possible. In fact, I can't stream films through my beautifully interpolating video card at all.
  
  My computers, which are attached to my small LCD digital TV screen, are Unix, Linux, & MacOSX with IBM chips. (Big-endian bytes are the default for Unix.) So, no streaming, ever.
  
  For ethical reasons, I can't purchase Microsoft, and I avoid Intel, so I shall continue mailing DVDs of 'Brideshead Revisited' and black & white classics, which I'm happy with.
  
  However, I had thought collusion of companies the size of NetFlix, Intel, & Microsoft would be illegal. As much as I like the company, this makes my using their services uncomfortable. (As a retired computer consultant, I must say that it also makes predicting what is possible, for clients, political & unsavory.)

  27.10.2009 14:07 #3