Watch Now

So Netflix recently started a new service on their site called Watch Now. I'm signed up for the $14 plan so this entitles me to 14 hours worth of movies per month. Pretty cool.

My guess is that this is in answer to Blockbuster's recent campaign touting that unlike Netflix, you don't have to wait by the mailbox for the next movie to arrive, you can also get movies from their brick & mortar stores. Watch Now is like Netflix saying "who needs stores?".

So I figured I'd give it a try since this would help me to whittle down my list a bit faster. Unfortunately, they don't have all their titles available in Watch Now format, but this makes sense since the service is new and they do seem to be adding new films regularly. What is nice is that they allow you to pick movies from your queue, though seemingly not in any particular order and watching the movie does not remove it from your queue as if you had sent it back in the mail.

The service requires that you install a viewer, which is nothing new to anyone who's watched a TV show like LOST on their PC. The download was fast and problem free and the movie started right up. The player checks your video and internet to determine what resolution and image quality will work best for your PC. The controls are basic. There's a full screen option that gives you a pretty good picture, even at 54kbps via wireless. In Full Screen mode, clicking anywhere on the screen will toggle play/pause. There's no Forward or Rewind, just a slider that goes minute by minute. There's also no option for language or subtitles which would have been nice, but I can understand their omission. All in all, not a bad setup and once I can hook my Laptop to my TV, probably not a bad way to watch a movie.

What I'm really curious about is my bank of hours, especially considering that the movie I was watching (When Harry Met Sally) stopped midway through when my wireless network decided to grind to a screeching halt for some unknown reason. I eventually had to shut down my laptop to get it to work again. 57 minutes into the movie and I have to start all over again. Now, the movie's about 95 minutes long, so since I had to start over and move the slider to the 57 minute mark, am I still only using 1 hour and 35 minutes or would that instead count for 3 hours and 10 minutes?

I don't foresee using this feature all of the time, especially with the hourly system. It would have been better to say "congrats, you get 6 movies" and at least then I'd know that I'm not going to have to watch my minutes to ensure that I don't run out in the middle of a gripping film when I hit the 13hr 59min mark. And honestly, 6 movies is a lot and I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. It wouldn't be too far off the mark from 14 hours and in fact I'd probably end up under 14 hours most months unless I was planning to watch a bunch of old scifi like 2001, Solaris (the original 4 hour Russian version, which is in my queue) and Dune.

All-in-all, pretty cool and simple to set up and use. Add some features and change the meter from hours to films and I'm all over it.