Netflix Jumps Aboard Trend, Offers Unlimited Streaming Movies To Your TV for $99

July 15, 2008 · by Scott

Earlier I wrote how on-demand boxes, home servers and media center PCs will destroy Blockbuster, Netflix and Redbox if they didn’t join in on a trend. Well, I saw on Yahoo today that this is exactly what Netflix has done with Roku.

I once had a Netflix subscription for a couple years and loved it. When I had to cut some bills, it was one of them. I never got around to resubscribing, but the Roku Netflix Player looks too good to pass up.

Netflix has teamed up with Roku to offer a $99 Netflix player (for U.S. only).

The box simply plugs into your home theater and displays your Netflix queue on your TV. You can then browse your queue and select movies to watch on-demand (they take 5-25 seconds to start). You have to set your queue up on your PC ahead of time. But in my experience, that’s not a big deal since I had about 200 movies in my queue at any given point. You get unlimited viewings any time you want.

Check out these features:

HDMI, component video, S-video and composite video means it can hook up to 95% of TVs or receivers.
Optical digital audio and regular stereo audio.
Plugs into your network just like a PC would; with a cat5 ethernet.
Small simple remote control.
Selection of 10,000+ movies.
The box is about the size of a book.

For a first generation box, they nearly hit the nail on the head. With HDMI and Blu-Ray movies, it’s fully compatible with HDTV.

This player streams the movies, it doesn’t actually download them. You are able to pause, fast forward and rewind.

After doing some Googling, I found that Wired did an article about this player in May. The reporter said he was up within 5 minutes of installation.

So the catches:

$99 one-time fee.
Existing netflix account ($9+ a month).
You can only browse your queue, not the entire catalog.
It only works with movies that are already available for streaming, which isn’t their whole catalog.

That last one is the only true catch in my opinion. But I suspect the number of available movies to grow quickly. It is still worth the $99 in my book.

Now all the Roku player needs is an affiliate program (and a promise from cable providers to not throttle their customers).

So Netflix is aboard this trend. How will Blockbuster respond?

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