Digital Daily » video-streaming

Netflix: There's a Movie Waiting on Your iPhone

John Paczkowski — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:26:14 +0000

Among the 1,000-plus new features included in Apple’s iPhone 3.0 is a new open standard for live video streaming over HTTP, and soon, Netflix will make use of it. Well, that’s the rumor anyway.

An industry executive said to be familiar with the company’s plans tells Multichannel News that Netflix plans to extend its Watch Instantly video-streaming service to the Nintendo Wii and to the iPhone and iPod touch as well.

It’s not entirely clear how the company plans to bring Watch Instantly to the iPhone. Presumably, it will use a native iPhone app, since the device doesn’t support Silverlight, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Flash-esque also-ran.

That said, there are some hurdles to negotiate there since native video streaming on iPhone 3.0 doesn’t yet support digital rights management.

Another issue likely to prove problematic: Bandwidth. Watch Instantly streaming typically requires a fair bit of bandwidth and might prove problematic over 3G connections. AT&T (T), which hobbled SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone over bandwidth concerns, will probably see things that way. Which means Netflix’s app, if it is indeed in development, will be limited to Wi-Fi like the SlingPlayer.

Beyond that and the DRM issue, there’s not much more I can think of to prevent such an app from being brought to the iPhone. There’s not much overlapping content between Watch Instantly and Apple’s iTunes service. And even if there was, there’s no real rivalry here that might inspire Apple to block Netflix’s (NFLX) service. iTunes is run pretty much at break-even to support sales of Apple (AAPL) devices. And a Netflix app for iPhone would arguably help Apple do that as well.

Meeska Mooska MousekaHulu

John Paczkowski — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:55:29 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Netflix to Stream Hannah Montana Contagion

John Paczkowski — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:50:31 +0000

Looks like Netflix’s video-streaming business is developing quite nicely. On Tuesday the DVD-by-mail pioneer said it has signed deals with CBS and Walt Disney that will add some of those networks’ most popular shows to the Netflix streaming library. Beginning this week, Netflix will offer episodes of like CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and Disney’s “Hannah Montana” current season TV shows for streaming 24 hours after their initial broadcast.

Now, Disney (DIS) and CBS (CBS) already offer those same shows for viewing on the same day-after-original air date schedule on their own Web sites (though they aren’t presented commercial-free as they will be on Netflix). But that doesn’t seem to matter to Netflix (NFLX), which is clearly positioning itself as a one-stop shop for online delivery of movies and television shows.

And doing quite well at it, I might add. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter estimates that between 10 and 20 percent of Netflix’s 8.4 million subscribers use the company’s streaming service regularly.