March 2nd, 2007

I watched my first movie last night through Netflix's "Watch Now" feature. I learned via Gizmodo that this feature is available for everyone, just by clicking a link in the accounts page. This is an effective way to roll this feature out, until it's available for all accounts automatically in June: if you know what it is, you can get access to it; if you don't, you don't know what you're missing and Netflix has a chance to work through scaling issues.

I watched the old 1959 Sci-Fi classic, Angry Red Planet last night. There wasn't any interruption in the movie streaming and the quality is as good as anything iTunes provides. Better, actually. As for the viewing experience, nothing is better than the old Technicolor movies on my HD television. I may not have the resolution, but I sure get the color. Red! Really red!

As for selection, I'm really impressed with the eclectic mix of movies: Casablanca, The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as several lesser known and more modern releases. I can easily use up my allocated hours per month.

As far as I know, this is a US-based service only, as is Netflix. Still, if it catches on, I wouldn't be surprised to see it being offered in other countries.

Comments
1
Charles - 2:50 pm 3/2/2007

That's one of the first things people commented on when digital services like DirecTV came out, the color is really vivid. The vendors made use of this by promoting the picture quality as superior to analog cable TV. But it's really misleading, the color resolution is excellent but the picture itself is compressed and lower resolution than analog. Another "problem," the digital signals don't show any picture noise, it's all smoothed over, but I think the noise is part of the useful signal and should be visible, if you smooth out noise, you're smoothing out detail.
Sorry, this is sort of a video geek's complaint.

2
Melinda - 3:25 pm 3/2/2007

Technicolor is fantastic, isn't it? I watched "That's Entertainment" recently, and Carmen Miranda in Technicolor is simply the way it should be.

I don't know why they got rid of it — I suppose it was too expensive…

3
ralph - 5:16 pm 3/2/2007

Too expensive and too labor intensive. Technicolor was basically three separate strips of film, each black and white but shot through colored filters and combined in the lab. When they came out with film that combined all three color emulsions on one strip, that was pretty much the end.

4
shelleyp - 6:55 pm 3/3/2007

I may have talked too soon, as the quality has not been that great since.

I have noticed loss of detail, especially today Charles. I wonder if it's because it's the weekend.

Thanks to all those who have contributed to the discussion. Comments are now closed, but you can contact the author of the post directly.