Netflix movie, TV ep streaming coming to Xbox

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 15 July 2008 08:17

Your IT - Entertainment

A deal between Microsoft and Netflix will see movies and TV episodes streamed to US Xbox 360s, beginning this fall (northern autumn).

Microsoft says the addition of more than 10,000 items from the Netflix library to the existing Xbox Live Marketplace Video Store will mean the console will have a bigger range of on-demand movie and TV content than any other device that can be connected to a television.

The forthcoming service will require an Xbox Live gold membership and a Netflix subscription, but not additional charges will be involved.

Items selected from the Netflix web site will be ready to play in as little as 30 seconds, according to Microsoft, but this will presumably vary according to the speed of the user's Internet connection.

Pause, rewind and fast-forward will all be available via the Xbox 360 controller or media remote.

"Watching movies at home will never be the same. Netflix on Xbox 360 is an entertainment first, and we are bringing friends together with the best in entertainment content like no other device in the living room," said John Schappert, corporate vice president of Microsoft's interactive entertainment Live, software and services business.

"We are creating a completely new social entertainment experience, and Xbox 360 will be the only video game system where you can access your library of instantly streamable movies from Netflix and turn any room into a virtual movie theater," he added.

Netflix' main business is a rental library allowing members to place orders online and have the discs (DVD or Blu-ray) delivered by mail. A subset of the library is already available for streaming to a PC (Windows XP SP2/SP3 or Vista only).

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