A few weeks ago I heard that Netflix had worked a deal with the folks at Nintendo, and was offering it’s streaming video service via the Wii. For those who aren’t aware of it, Netflix, the DVD mail-order rental service, has been connecting to a variety of devices for live streaming of TV Shows and movies. The cost is reasonable — available with the low end $9 per month Netflix service (1 physical movie disk at a time), and so I decided to take advantage of a trial membership and check it out.
One accesses the service on the Wii using a special disk that Netflix sends you. It obviously requires that your Wii have a broadband connection, but WiFi access to most Wii’s is quickly becoming ubiquitous, so that isn’t a problem for most. Given the nature of the Wii, it isn’t streaming High De, but honestly it is the rare Wii that’s hooked up to a High Def set.
Once everything is set, the thing works great. It has given us smooth streaming with nary a blip. The selection of movies and programs is somewhat limited, but there are lots of legacy shows that it’s been fun to watch (can anyone say Buffy the Vampire Slayer). In fact, since we got this on Wednesday, no one has watched “regular” TV at all. It’s been great for me because the cheap satellite plan we subscribe to doesn’t include the Discovery Channel, but Netflix has a lot of the programs that I love and miss - The Deadliest Catch and Mythbusters.
One additional feature is that Netflix also allows streaming to a personal computer, and doesn’t limit the concurrent connections, so at one point this week the girls were watching a show on the Wii while I was watching another show at the same time on the computer. The computer streaming isn’t especially high quality, but it’s not bad and works well enough for me.
What is interesting is to think about the potential of this. What would be great is to see Netflix work a deal with Hulu to stream Hulu programming via the Wii, which would pretty much kill off my need for satellite service. It certainly paints a picture of the future of internet based television.
I give the Netflix/Wii streaming service a thumbs up.
