Word: netflixing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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They're starting to fill the racks in video stores, in packages that look like the shorter siblings of DVDs. Netflix carries nearly 1,400 of them, along with 100,000 of the old models. They are Blu-ray discs. This Sony video format, having won a staring contest with rival HD DVD, is now officially the next generation in home entertainment. The promise is that movies will look better than ever, duplicating and perhaps surpassing the big-screen experience. Manufacturers and film companies, investing zillions in the process, want you to say, Wow! But first they want...
Plenty of my countrymen do. Through necessity, I was entering a club more viewers are joining by choice: the posttelevision society. Some download TV to avoid ads. Some Netflix series so they can watch them in one big marathon. Some like the convenience, some the portability. Some are cutting their cable or satellite bills to save money in hard times. Millions of others use online video as a backup--Huluing dramas they missed live, watching March Madness on CBSSports.com or Wimbledon on ESPN360. (Preferably at work...
...Over in the East Village, Mondo Kim's was New York's premier video rental outlet; its trove of 55,000 items included all manner of ancient, foreign or just plain weird movies in DVD or, bless 'em, VHS format. Netflix, a more convenient but much less comprehensive service, killed off owner Youngman Kim's rental business, and with it a unique source for voracious cinephile. Don't ask me why, but the whole collection was bought by the Sicilian town of Salemi, and will be shown in what the burghers call the Neverending Festival. It's a sign that...
Setting up the Roku was about as painless an experience as I've had and took less than five minutes. I cabled it to my TV, powered up both, then followed the onscreen prompts. I watched video by logging into my Netflix account (you'll need one) and adding movies and TV seasons to my "instant" queue. The queue shows up on the Roku box in mere seconds. To test the gadget, I moldered on the couch in my office for a few days, watching The Office reruns, some old Kubrick and Peckinpah movies and a Jimi Hendrix documentary...
...occasions, movies paused for a few seconds to buffer. That's a buzz kill. The Roku folks say that can happen when your broadband speed drops below 1 megabit per second. (My standard Comcast connection is usually above 2 megabits per second, but congestion happens.) On the Netflix front, it suffers from two limitations. Netflix doesn't yet offer high-definition movies on demand, while its competitors (Apple, Vudu) do. And 10,000 titles is still a relatively modest selection. Indeed, a head-to-head comparison with, say, Apple's online store shows iTunes has far more new releases...