Netflix continues its seemingly inexorable spread with D-Link making it available on its Boxee Box, finally, in the US and Canada. The Boxee Box makes Netflix and other online services available on millions of non-smart TVs. Netflix, which offers lots of highly-rated movies, including those from Starz, has continued to grow. Its share price hit an all-time high this week. The Netflix Watch Now streaming service is only available currently in the US and Canada.
It’s on a number if set-top boxes like Apple TV and Boxee plus on almost all smart TVs and Blu-ray players. At $9 a month with one free DVD rental at a time included (streaming only in Canada), it’s a heck of a deal for watching movies and TV shows. Content, even older black and white films like ‘Foreign Correspondent,’ are shown in high-quality. Netflix also offers lots of older flicks plus a large number of foreign films with subtitles. The British, German, French, Swedish and Italian studios have made much of their better content available.
All three of the very well-made Swedish versions of Stieg Larsson’s three novels (currently at numbers 2, 3 and 4 on The New York Times best-selling books list) are available for streaming. Few of them made it to theaters outside of New York or Los Angeles. Many other very popular non-US made films are available, many of which did not get much showing in the States.
Implementation of the Netflix user interface varies significantly on the various smart TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. Some, such as LG’s offering, are hard to operate and don’t have fully implemented searches. Companies have different approaches to typing. Some make it difficult. Apple TV and the iPad have, as might be expected, among the easier to use implementations.
D-Link’s Boxee Box’ Netflix implementation includes:
– Dolby Digital TrueHD bit streaming.
– High resolution SRT subtitles.
– Updated drivers for external IR remotes.
– Support for Windows Vista class remotes.
Netflix is seemingly on every possible device. Its only major competitors in the US seem to be Hulu, although it specializes in TV shows and Apple iTunes. In Europe the now Amazon-owned LoveFilm has a big lead with a Netflix like service although it does not have as high a market penetration as Netflix has.