Netflix “Watch Now… Except if You’re on a Mac”
Posted by: Travis Schmeisser on Friday July 20, 2007
A few nights ago, my girlfriend and I were jonesing for a new movie, with both of our latest ones still on the way through the mail from Netflix. We remembered that they started a “Watch Now” feature that let’s you download “over 3,000 full-length movies & TV episodes” so we rushed to the section only to be faced with a “System Compatibility” message stating:
Your operating system is not compatible with this feature. Try again from a computer with Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista.
Super lame! For a second I felt relief when I realized I have WM Components installed to allow me to watch Windows Media files, except they don’t even provide a way to get there. Since I’m on a Mac, I just get a direct message stating the same once I try to click “Play.” My experience and opinion have been untainted and nearly flawless with them up until this point. Why on earth would you use a technology that cuts users out when there are perfectly good alternatives? Such discrimination in this day and age… Good thing I don’t need “Netscape 4 and a screen resolution of at least 640×480” to view the site as well.
On a sidenote, nice pixel edges on that message box, jerks.
Filed under: Interweb
Jon
07.24.07 at 6:19am
I thought that the Watch Now service was incredibly cool the first month I used it, but now I’m finding that the quality of film is on par with the cable company’s on demand offerings.
If you’re dying to watch Stroker ace, some indy documentaries, or some classics, you’re missing out. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry that you’re missing out.
And nice grab on the pixels. That was funny.
Rhea Drysdale
07.24.07 at 11:55am
I would wager the percentage of Mac users to PC for Netflix is higher than Blockbuster simply given the psychographics. Blockbuster is the Wal-Mart of movie rentals and most educated, liberal-minded and affluent people (often Mac users) are probably drawn to Netflix as a result. So, you would think they see value in catering to or at the very least covering those users.
Additionally, there are probably more early adopter, tech savvy bloggers on a Mac than PC that when angered will post blogs like this. You should send them a link to this post if you haven’t already done so, I bet you’d get some free stuff out of it.
ok, back to copy… ;)
Christopher
08.10.07 at 3:15pm
The problem is that Flip4Mac doesn’t work with DRM and the MPAA isn’t about to let Netflix stream their movies without copy protection.
On the positive side, a version of the Netflix player is being written using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. If the preview Netflix showed is anything close to what they’ll release, it should work on the Mac as well as PC.
http://visitmix.com/Blogs/Joshua/netflix-uses-silverlight-for-video-on-demand/