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Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on March 6, 2008 at 6:58am

Are we sure this is a Netflix website issue, or might it be an IE8 beta problem?

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Permalink Reply by Shelley on March 13, 2008 at 5:19am

Netflix does not work with IE8. There are underlying incompatibilities with libraries that trigger Netflix into thinking an upgrade is needed. However, the upgrade fails. Even if you try to use the IE7 emulation mode, Netflix fails with IE8.

I've tried to turn this into Netflix as a bug.

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Permalink Reply by The Real Levi Johnston on March 13, 2008 at 5:41am

This is good to know, as I'm liable to jump on beta browsers...Netflix will no doubt work with Microsoft to work this out asap -- maybe with an early introduction of Silverlight? -- Please keep us updated through this thread, thanks again.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Kingsley clark on April 26, 2008 at 9:11am

For a while, I was able to use the "Emulate IE7" feature of IE8 to be able to navigate the site normally like IE7 did. However, this past week I began having issues with the "Watching Instantly" Movie Viewer. It is giving me this message:

"Movie Viewer Component Required
The Netflix Movie Viewer requires installation of ActiveX controls. These components add essential features to your web browser."

However, I've made no changes to my browser (no updates, configuration modifications, etc), so this must have been some incompatibility popping up from a change on their side. Has anyone had any issues with IE8 -- IE7 Emulation and the Movie Viewer?

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Permalink Reply by April on May 16, 2008 at 4:33pm

I have been using Watch Instantly since it's inception, without trouble. Until two weeks ago, that is. Now, every time it tries to connect, it crashes Explorer. I called them and spent an hour on the phone with their support staff. While the man was very nice, he was not helpful. He told me to do all the things I'd already done. I did them any way--to be friendly. However, when he told me that the last thing to try was uninstalling Explorer and reinstalling it, I drew the line. Explorer is imbedded with components that other programs use, and it'll totally mess up my machine. NOT cool. Not truly helpful...and now I feel rather ripped off and grumpy. We use this feature a lot, and I feel like it's part of their service...which I can no longer access. Any one have any ideas?? Netflix doesn't.

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Permalink Reply by April on May 16, 2008 at 4:43pm

Well, apparently they've fixed something whilst I wasn't looking. It now works. Lovely. I still think their advice was lousy though...but, I'm glad they fixed it!

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Permalink Reply by Adrian on May 16, 2008 at 9:41pm

See Yahoo's graded browser support matrix. Bill Scott is ex-Yahoo and director of the UI engineers at Netflix, and has adopted this matrix as the goal for Netflix to track. IE8 is still considered beta, and is not part of the set of browsers that are tested. Over time, IE8 will be added. I have been posting feature enhancements here and will note IE8 support when it arrives.

Adrian from Netflix

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Permalink Reply by Jess on August 30, 2008 at 7:59pm

Adrian,
On Microsoft's IE8 release notes page (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949787) they state that they are working with Netflix to resolve this issue. Is netflix really not going to work on this issue until IE8 is out of beta or have they already started working on this (since your post is from May)?

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Permalink Reply by 2McAbre on August 31, 2008 at 9:01am

Yeppers, I just updated to IE8 beta 2 and while most of Netflix site works (the pop up info doesn't work for me). Perhaps the message should also be changed
;-)

Complete System Requirements
To watch instantly on your computer, you'll need a PC meeting the following minimum requirements:

•Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, or Windows Vista
•Internet Explorer version 6 or higher

(Last time I checked 8 was higher then 6, is all I'm saying)

Though if you click on "Page" and select "Compatibility View" the pages load but get hung up on the video quality test. With the only error listed as:

Webpage Script Errors

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Message: Invalid argument.
Line: 5
Char: 3
Code: 0
URI: http://image.netflix.com/us/script/bwdata.js

You can click on the play icons and it also hangs on the video quality test.

So if full support for IE 8.0 isn't coming yet, at least someone could check that script and fix it so that it would work in compatibility mode for now ;-)

BTW, the above error is also the only one showing when not using compatibility mode. So it seems the issue appears to lie with the speed test (at least for now).

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Permalink Reply by Adrian on August 31, 2008 at 11:01am

As the IE8 release note states, Netflix and Microsoft are working on this issue. However, checking the Yahoo graded browser support site as of today, IE8 beta is not supported by Yahoo, and is not supported by Netflix. As IE8 gets closer to release more time will be spent testing and fixing issues. We can't say at this point when it will be regarded as fully supported, but the specific issue mentioned (playing instant watch titles) is being worked on. I'll post a note here when there are releases that include changes to Netflix IE8 support.

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Permalink Reply by Jess on August 30, 2008 at 8:02pm

Check out microsoft's release notes for IE8. They are aware of an issue with Netflix instant watch and 'are working with Netflix' on a solution. No idea how long this will take or even if they have really started working with them.

link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949787

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Permalink Reply by war6161 on August 31, 2008 at 7:07am

Netflix must have done something last night. I use Firefox, and now the "Community" section doesn't render correctly. The "Latest Member Reviews" section that has the active scroll, is sort of indented in the frame so only 1/4 of the column of text/icons is viewable!

I can live with "Watch Instant" only working in IE, but Netflix is making it difficult for us FF users to stay.

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