It’s a huge week for movies: the Cannes film festival has begun in earnest, a new installment of the Terminator series opens on Thursday and today Microsoft announces the availability of Netflix in Windows Vista Media Center – including more than 12,000 TV shows and movies that are available for instant viewing.
With your Netflix account, you can search available titles, manage your DVD queue, and even filter results so you only see what is available for watching instantly.
Above: Scrolling through titles by genre. You can also search for a specific title.
Above, the <Instant Queue> shows you the movies you have selected to watch instantly. The <DVD Queue>, below, lists the movies being mailed to you.
In my house, where my main Media Center is hooked up to my TV, that means I can kick back on the couch and with the remote scroll through thousands of offerings before decided which one I what I want to see.
Setting It Up
Set-up is quick and easy. Once the Netflix tile has appeared in your Media Center menu (in the TV+Movies strip) you select it and the app will download and install.
If you don’t have a Netflix membership, you can set one up here as well.
Once installed, you just sign-in and are good to go.
There's also some videos you can check out.
While there have been a handful of third-party solutions for integrating Netflix in Windows Media Center, this is the first Microsoft has provided natively.
While the feature does not work over a Media Center Extender, a Netflix solution already exists for the XBox 360 with an XBox Live Gold-level membership.
But for set-ups like mine – where the Media Center is attached directly to the TV, or for the growing number of folks using their laptops as an entertainment device, the addition of Netflix brings a whole new world of content to your screen, delivered over the Internet. It’s another big step towards a world of broadband-delivered content available a la carte and on demand.
That’s a place we all want to be. Good times.