PS3 owners no longer have to be jealous of Xbox 360 owners. Now, they too can stream Netflix goodness through their gaming console of choice. That is, with a little help from a free Netflix disc they can.

The loader disc should have arrived last week for those that jumped on the offer right away. Just pop that Netflix disc into your PS3 to load-up the software and away you go. Of course you have to use that disc, which activates the service via Blu-ray’s BD-Live service, every time you want to stream something from Netflix, but it’s better than nothing. Hopefully Sony and Netflix are working on a software update that will enable the service without this step. Hopefully.

I’m actually glad that the PS3 has Netflix streaming now. It’s a nice addition to a really great Blu-ray player. If I owned a PS3, I’d totally get the disc and stream my heart out…

You know, like I have been doing since 2008 on my 360.

Yeah, this player isn’t you reference quality unit, but my goodness, for $100 who cares. The unit will playback Blu-ray discs just fine, display all the BD-Live goodies and stream Netflix. What more can you want for that price? [Best Buy via Electronic House]

Initially, watching movies instantly streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system will be enabled by a free, instant streaming Blu-ray disc that is being made available to all Netflix members. The free instant streaming disc leverages Blu-ray’s BD-Live™ technology to access the Internet and activate the Netflix user interface on the PS3 system, which must be online via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

I don’t even want to speculate, it’s too weird. The content is hosted online, streamed over the internet, and the application and interface can’t take up more than a few megabytes. Yet they feel the need to next-day-air you a freaking Blu-ray disc that’s apparently the only way to access it. That’s a bit like having somebody climb the stairs in order to get to an escalator, isn’t it?

Maybe this is just a temporary thing, but maybe it really is as dumb as it sounds. We’ll know next month. At any rate, it’s a pretty awesome score for Sony. Maybe Microsoft only signed up for a two-month-long exclusive?

Some Netflix news for you this morning. It looks like a 49-year-old post office worker is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison after having plead guilty to federal theft charges. What was he stealing? Oh, you know, some 3,000 Netflix DVDs over the years.

The man, one Myles Weathers, was nabbed after surveillance footage found him taking DVDs from the little sleeves. Netflix itself had become suspicious when it received an unusually high number of complaints saying, “Hey, we never got our DVD~! What’s up?”

Yup, that’s because Mr. Weathers was stealing them all at a Massachusetts distribution facility.

In the chat room, Scott came up with an idea, if you were to do such a scam: instead of stealing the DVDs and never returning them, why not steal ‘em, rip ‘em, then send them on their way? What are the odds that someone is going to notice an extra day in mail delivery time?

One more notch in Netflix streaming’s belt, though.

$1 if you can figure out what DVD that is in the logo. (Note: Offer not valid on Planet Earth.)

The official winner is “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos”. This team was a combination of several other teams that weren’t doing as well, and decided to combine their efforts in order to win. The 30 members managed to find the right combination of variables to meet the 10% accuracy rate required to win the contest.

So what’s next? Netflix is trying to make their predictive software even more accurate. The first contest included 100 million movie ratings, with no personally identifiable data included. The next set of data will include demographic and behavioral data, and will require the people attempting to win to create a “taste profile” based on the movies that a user has rented or looked at in the past.

[via NYTimes Bit Blog]

Microsoft might have scored an exclusive deal to keep Netflix Xbox 360 only and off both the PS3 and Wii. But if you’re willing to forgo the fancy UI on the Xbox, there is still a way to get Netflix on the PS3 and eventually the Wii too.

MediaMall has a software pack called PlayOn that uses the DLNA system built into almost every networked AV device. Right now I use the software on my Xbox 360, Moxi HD DVR, Helios X5000 and Archos Gen 5 hooked up to my bedroom TV with a DVR station.  

The user interface isn’t spectacular as the program uses the device’s DLNA system. The great thing is that the software pack not only supports Netflix, but also Hulu, YouTube, ESPN, CBS, and Revision3. There are some drawbacks like the $39.99 cost after a 14-day trial ends, and the YouTube support isn’t exactly stellar. In the end though, the software gives you access to a lot of content not official supported by the devices.

Sorry, Wii and PS3 owners. You ain’t getting Netflix streaming despite other claims. Microsoft has inked an exclusive deal with Netflix to keep the movie streaming on the Xbox 360.

Netflix Partnership

This exclusive partnership offers you the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via Xbox 360. Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience, available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix unlimited plan subscribers**, at no additional cost.

From the Netflix Web site, simply add movies and TV episodes to your instant Queue, which will appear automatically on the TV screen via Xbox 360. Once selected, movies will begin playing in as little as 30 seconds. In addition to instantly streaming Netflix movies to the TV, Xbox LIVE Gold members can browse and rate movies, fast-forward, pause and rewind, all using either their Xbox 360 Controller or Universal remote.

If you don’t have a Xbox 360, there are a ton of ways to stream Netflix. The service is available on everything from Windows Media Center, Plex, Roku boxes, TiVo, Samsung and LG Blu-ray players along with Vizio and LG HDTVs. Oh, and Sony Bravia HDTVs are getting the access too. Or you can always, you know, use the traditional mail-order DVD service to get your Netflix on.

LOS GATOS, Calif., July 9, 2009 – Netflix, Inc., (Nasdaq: NFLX) the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced a partnership with Sony Electronics that will enable Netflix subscribers to instantly watch movies streamed from Netflix on Sony’s BRAVIA Internet Video-capable HDTVs and on previous BRAVIA models compatible with Sony’s BRAVIA Internet video link module.
In the fall, Netflix members on an unlimited plan can use the Sony BRAVIA Internet Video-capable HDTVs to instantly watch more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix.

Sony is the latest consumer electronics (CE) company to partner with Netflix. Other CE companies partnering with Netflix are Microsoft (with the Xbox360), LG Electronics, Roku, Samsung, TiVo and VIZIO.

Netflix members pay as little as $8.99 a month for unlimited streaming from a library of more than 12,000 choices and unlimited DVDs by mail from a library of more than 100,000 DVD titles in more than 200 genres.

“Sony has been a world leader in consumer electronics for decades,” said Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings. “We are proud to include Sony Electronics among our CE partners who continue to provide new and exciting ways for Netflix members to instantly watch movies and TV episodes in their living rooms on their TVs.”

Widgets and gadgets are the latest trend to hit HDTVs. Vizio is upping the game by equipping its soon-to-be-released HDTVs with an impressive suite of Internet applications and video streaming sites. So much so, that this portfolio will place them on top of many people’s wish list as these TVs will be better equipped than a TiVo or even Windows Media Server.

Forget about Vizio being a mid-tier, Walmart brand. These features might make some people question why they pay a monthly fee for a TiVo. Owners will be able to stream content from Revision3, Showtime and Pandora for free, while also able to subscribe to Vudu, Netflix, Blockbuster OnDemand, Amazon Video On Demand and Rhapsody. Plus, the sets are able to work with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the Yahoo Widgets Engine.

All this content should be easily controlled and managed with a Bluetooth remote that features a slide-down QWERTY keyboard. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing this feature finally becoming available. Hopefully similar remotes will soon be available from TiVo and Moxi as there is nothing more annoying than typing via an on-screen keyboard.

The HDTVs connect to the local network via either 802.11n or wired networking. There is no word on DLNA support, but we wouldn’t be surprised if that finds its way into spec list.

Expect the new XVT series to be available next month and start at $749 for a 32-inch. The series continues up in price as LED-backing and 240Hz options are added. The top of the line VF551XVT has both options as well as five HDMI ports for $2,199 and will be available this September.

We’re just hoping that the picture matches the impressive feature list…

Xbox 360 owners-

On June 16th, the Xbox team is shutting down Live and Xbox.com for maintenance. This will cause your Netflix streaming on your Xbox 360 to cease while Microsoft fiddles with your console.

On Tuesday, June 16 beginning at 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PDT (2009-06-16 0701 to 2009-06-17 0659 UTC) Xbox LIVE and Xbox.com will be offline for scheduled maintenance. As a result, the “My Xbox” section of Xbox.com will not be available, and the Xbox forums will be in read-only mode, and you will be unable to post. The rest of Xbox.com will be functional and available. When services are restored, up to 24 hours later, there will be no new functionality or features.

via Netflix

Over at IEEE Spectrum there’s a very nice post-mortem from one of the teams that won a Progress prize. The piece covers some of the methods used to improve the recommendation system, and closes with this:

Now that the confetti has settled, we have a chance to look back on our work and to ask what this experience tells us. First, Netflix has incorporated our discoveries into an improved version of its algorithm, which is now being tested. Second, researchers are benefiting from the data set that the competition made available, and not just because it is orders of magnitude larger than previous data sets. It is also qualitatively better than other data sets, because Netflix gathered the information from paying customers, in a realistic setting. Third, the competition itself recruited many smart people in this line of research.

Reading this got me thinking about how enormously complex it must be to tease out movie recommendations based solely on an arbitrary number that represents a viewer’s opinion of a movie. That’d be like going to Match.com and expecting to find your soulmate by ranking your previous dates with 1 through 5 stars. Crazy!

Obviously its in Netflix’s best interest to keep the movie rating system as simple and as convenient as possible. If you had to rank each actor in a movie, or rank plot elements or directors or writers, the system could better recommend movies that appeal to you, but you’d be stuck at the Netflix website for days providing input. Thankfully there are super smart people out there figuring out how to identify patterns from this kind of data.

Now it’s our job to make sure that we don’t accidentally create SkyNet in the process…

If you’re not a member, hit up some free trial action and you could be watching a movie in about two minutes without leaving your chair.

Personally I don’t like the all-in-one media applications like iTunes and Windows Media Center, but for people who don’t want to futz around with codec packs and weird open source stuff like Media Player Classic, VLC, and other stuff, the increasing robustness of omnibus media players must be comforting. After all, you do your queue online, why shouldn’t you be able to open up your default player and watch stuff there?

You can find more info at the Media Center site, or at this post on TV on your PC.

From the job listing:

The gaming platforms team is responsible for prototyping, testing and building the Netflix experience for gaming consoles.

We seek deep experience developing and testing media rich applications on current generation gaming consoles.

Expect to help build a small technology team to rapidly prototype and iterate on a variety of platforms.

Experience with digital media on embedded platforms; ideally on one or more gaming consoles

In almost every sentence of the job listing there’s mention of multiple game consoles. I’d love to be able to stream my Netflix queue on my PSP or on my mobile device. Isn’t the iPhone considered a gaming platform now? But how soon will we actually see the service roll out across multiple platforms? A recent survey asked if patrons would be willing to pay $10 for the service on the PlayStation 3. I wonder how many applicants they’ve had since the job was posted on the 6th of this month.

Monster

Thanks for the tip, Mike P., of Pleasanton, CA.

Again with the Plex. I know, I know. But! Today’s news is legitimately interesting: Netflix is now fully functional within Plex, the best damn Mac media player out there.

Yup, provided you have a Netflix account, you can stream to your heart’s content using Plex. Fair warning: you’ll need to install Silverlight, so if that’s an issue…

I don’t doubt that people who know what Plex is don’t already have an Xbox 360, that streams the same content and is hooked up to a 40 plus-inch TV, so it’s usefulness is somewhat suspect. But neat, certainly, and demonstrative of the new Plex plugin system.

The streaming selections from Nickelodeon feature critically acclaimed shows that have helped make it the number-one cable network for more than 14 years. The shows include “Blues Clues” (Seasons 1 and 2), “Dora the Explorer” (Seasons 1 and 2), “iCarly” (Seasons 1 and 2), “True Jackson, VP” (Season 1) and “SpongeBob SquarePants” (Season 3). In total, more than 300 episodes of these and other favorites from Nickelodeon television networks, including The N’s “Degrassi,” are also now available to be instantly streamed from Netflix.

Those with the 2-DVD at a time package will have to fork over an additional $3 on top of the $14 you already pay. And those with the 3-DVD at a time plan will by paying $21 as opposed to $17. The price hikes are due to increased demand for HD content even though only about 10 percent of Netflix’s 10 million-subscriber base opt for Blu-ray.

Look for the price increase to take effect on April 27. If you’re still on the DVD-only plans then you will not see an increase in your monthly subscription.

via AP

Oh. My. God. Neflix on the PS3. Can it be real? Please let it be real! I need yet another way to see a dodgy stream of a dodgy movie.

Apparently Netflix is asking its customers if they’d be willing to pay a one-time fee of $9.99 for the ability to stream movies to the PS3.

Silicon Alley Insider—you can tell the site means business because it uses companies’ stock name after every mention, that is, “Microsoft (MSFT) did well last year, here’s why”—did the heavy lifting and got nothing but predictable “we don’t talk about rumors” quotes from both Sony and Netflix. Well, Sony said it has “nothing to announce,” while Netflix has never elaborated on just how “exclusive” its deal with Microsoft (MSFT) is regarding Netflix streaming.

So, don’t be too surprised if one of these days you see a screaming yet bland headline: NETFLIX STREAMS TO PS3, YAY!

via Zatz Not Funny