Instant Watching

Here's a place to voice feedback about this feature. I trust this will include gripes about Mac or Linux availability, or the problems with the new player, and so on.

Tags: browse instant, instant watching

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Permalink Reply by MCWHAMMER on February 2, 2008 at 7:54pm: DRM. It has been giving lots of people trouble, locking their systems out for no reason, etc. It has not happened to me yet, thankfully. I think we should be allowed to view on any sized screen or output without restriction, otherwise Netflix can keep the Instant Watching service.

DRM causes unnecessary trouble.

When did this "new player" come around? I don't know if I have used it yet.

Also, on many of the movies I have "Watched Instantly", the sound is bad. Tinny, and at times, staticky. They are overly compressed or something. A recent example is "Helvetica". Just listen to the first 15 minutes of it, it is very hard annoying to listen to. Sound needs a lot of improvement (May not be all movies, but it has been the case for many I have watched).

Other than that, I can't come up with much more, interested in other peoples feedback though.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John.Doe on February 10, 2008 at 8:46pm: I am kind of outraged over the DRM that Netflix uses and it is really hard after my experiences with the WatchNow software to write something that is not insulting...
Last thursday I finally decided for the first time to try the "WatchNow". As I got a Vista Media Center connected to my TV, I thought it would be great. The first annoying thing was of course, that there is no integration with Vista Media Center, so that I had to use a keyboard to start it up. The movie prepared to show and then I got a DRM error and I should reset my DRM to fix it. Well, I read the warnings and had only one Amazon Unbox file on this computer, that would be wasted, so I proceeded. The DRM reset utility failed of course - how else could it be. The usual solution in such a case, restart the computer and try again, which I did. But then hell broke lose: all Media Center Services failed, I was not even able to watch TV anymore. In the hope that a successful DRM reset would fix all of that, I got back to the Netflix page, which was unexpectedly empty and did only show a message, that the web page would be down for maintenance until 7:30 the next morning.... if curses could kill, ...
Well, so I figured out myself how to locate the DRM folder and reset the DRM myself, got everything back working except WatchNow and let it rest for a couple of days.
I also figured out, that the reason for the DRM complaint is, that my TV does only have component inputs and therefore DRM would deliver only a reduced quality picture to prevent me from making copies of the material - another thing that made me mad: I pay for the content and cannot watch it in full quality.
Today I tried again to get WatchNow to work and it is useless crap. When I start the player the first time, it tells me, that I need to upgrade my media player, after I do this and the video prepares to play, I get the DRM error. The DRM reset utility fails of course, I suspect, that the previously started player locks some of the files that the reset utility wants to delete. If I restart the PC then and run the reset utility it is successful. But then, when I go back again to WatchNow, it tells me again, that it needs to upgrade my media player and the whole thing starts over.... I suppose the only method to fix this is to buy a new TV with a HDMI connector.
This is the worst software I have ever seen. At least I know how to fix my computer problems, so I could get my Media Center back to work again after that desaster of using the reset utility.
I have chosen Netflix over the service from the company with the blue colors, because I thought, that watching stuff instantly would be a nicer feature than to have the option to return movies to a store for exchange. Now I am thinking, that Iit might have been the wrong decision....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cloak N. Dagr on March 5, 2008 at 5:47pm: Don't feel too bad, I can't watch it at all. It won't complete a speed test. I pretty much "disarmed" my system to let them work on it, and no joy. I keep getting a script error "'doBandwidth Test' is undefined". The viewer won't connect to the server to begin the movie if it can't do a speed test. Called 'em and they can't do anything about it. I can get other streaming video from ABC, CBS, Sci-Fi, Hulu, etc. just fine. I don't know what they're doing that's so different and I don't know why they have to do it that way.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jmat on January 1, 2009 at 8:13pm: I'm glad I saw your post here. I've been having the same audio and video problems as you on the last two Instant Watch movies I'd tried.
Just now I got the DRM Error message for the first time.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by MCWHAMMER on February 5, 2008 at 6:20pm: I think this thread got buried, and want to see some more suggestions by people, so I'm bumping it. Anyone care to add to the discussion?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by jampony on February 5, 2008 at 7:39pm: Never had a problem with watch now until I just tried to watch Helvetica. "Your internet speed has slowed. Nine minutes until playback resumes." That's insane.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by droidmaker on February 5, 2008 at 7:49pm: I get that too, from time to time. I'll be watching something, all is fine. I stop, pull up something else, and it recalculates something and says it will take 10 hours or something ridiculous.... i tend to just "Go Back to Browsing", move my position for a moment, and try again. I can usually get it working...

I'll ask Steve why this happens (actually, Steve is working on something else right now -- I'll ask Brent -- and get back to you. I was wondering myself.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on February 5, 2008 at 8:35pm: When the film stops, what I do is, close out the window, and go back to it right away and it takes me back to the minute I was up to and works like a charm from there.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by UCFFool on February 5, 2008 at 7:59pm: As mentioned before, an Instant Watching queue to allow the convenience found from the 'watch instantly from your queue' box, without having to constantly move the dvds down the queue and out of the way.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on February 5, 2008 at 8:37pm: What I do is, keep a rated movie (i.e. with yellow stars) as dividers in my queue for a variety of reasons. One of the main ones, is for the instant watch - but that alone has different categories. It's been working for me. Who needs 500 films in their queue and waiting to take out?

But I agree, a separate instant watch queue without having those films come in the mail would be a nice feature to have. Until then....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by joeoftexas on April 2, 2008 at 11:29am: I move all "Instant Watching" movies to the very bottom of my queue -- # 400-500.
That way I always know where to find them, and none ever get mailed out to me as a DVD

(Unless I've decided I'd prefer to see it on DVD, for maximum picture quality and sound.
Then, I move that selection to the top of my queue -- # 10-30.); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on February 7, 2008 at 2:47am: "Instant Watching: Some instant watching titles are available for limited time periods. As a result, you may see titles that are no longer available for watching listed as "unavailable" in your instant watching history."

For these films, can a end date be mentioned? For example"This film will no longer be available to instant watch by ____________"; ▶ Reply to This