A quick review of NetFlix’s Watch Now feature

I liked it.
The system worked well on Vista when outputting to my 21" TV and feed by 25 feet of composite cable (essentially the worst quality possible).

Last week there were posts on several blogs about how to enable this before NetFlix gave you the feature. When I logged in to try the trick I discovered that they had already enabled it for me.

Last night I gave it a more comprehensive test. The biggest problem with the service is the selection - but I expect that will only improve over time. I selected one of my favorite movies of all time: The City of Lost Children. The movie is originally in French, so it contained sub-titles. The text was small on my screen, but was perfectly legible. I watched briefly at full screen on my 21" CRT monitor and the picture quality was great.

My biggest concern was the CPU load because my system isn't the fastest and I wasn't sure if Vista would be an additional hinderance. While I was watching the CPU load it was hovering around 60% with no other applications running.

If you are already a subscriber, I suggest you find the instructions for enabling the service (you get an hour of streaming for every dollar you spend a month). If you are not a NetFlix subscriber and enjoy watching movies at home (or on the go from a laptop) I suggest you subscribe today.