Netflix Launches new "Watch Now" Feature

Netflix: “NETFLIX OFFERS SUBSCRIBERS THE OPTION
OF INSTANTLY WATCHING MOVIES ON THEIR PCs
New Feature Will be Included in Subscribers’ Monthly Membership at no Extra Charge and Will Have a Phased Roll-Out Over Next Six Months

LOS GATOS, Calif., January 16, 2007 — Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today introduced a new feature that allows people to immediately watch movies and television series on their personal computers and said it will make the new feature available to its subscribers in a phased roll-out over the next six months. “

Now you can watch movies on demand with lighting speed directly from your Netflix account. This feature will be rolled out to all subscribers by June 2007. The movies start instantly and the player is based on their existing preview player. You will get one hour of viewing for every dollar a month you spend. So a $17.99 plan will get 18 hours of online viewing.

I’ve been subscribing to Vongo in addition to Netflix to satiate my need for instant movie viewing but as any Vongo subscriber can tell you “instant” is not always instant.

This new feature from Netflix looks amazing. It’s not active on my account yet but I’m hoping it soon will be. For a quick Camtasia movie of how this new feature works check out this demo over at Hacking Netflix.