 We’re Going Blu-ray
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Dear Ivan, You’re receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don’t worry, we will contact you before this happens.You can click here to change your format preferences.We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1 (888) 638-3549. -The Netflix Team |
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Aug. 21, 2007 — “Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the latest update for Adobe® Flash® Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar, which includes H.264 standard video support - the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray® and HD-DVD® high definition video players - and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback. These advancements will extend Adobe’s leadership position in Web video by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for immediate download later today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com.”
This update to Adobe Flash player will either finally push HD video to the forefront of the web, increase flash adoption to 99.9%, or slow down the web to a crawl… I would expect that providing HD support to Flash is a natural progression and should be adopted by Netflix to help their instant movie watching module as it the video content will allow for a greater resolution and will not lock out non-Windows users. Expect YouTube to upgrade as well with MovieStar–hopefully ushering in a new wave of HD content online as early adopters begin to upgrade to high definition video cameras and more professional videographers entering the fray with technology that will now be able to display their artwork with high quality resolution.
The Netflix Community Blog has posted a response to the demand from the Mac and Firefox user communities for the ability to watch Netflix movies instantly–the same way Windows/Internet Explorer users can today. See excerpt below…
“…And that’s our holdup for the Mac - there’s not yet a studio-sanctioned, publicly-available Mac DRM solution (Apple doesn’t license theirs). I can promise you that, when an approved solution becomes available for the Mac, we’ll be there. I’ll also say that Silverlight 1.1 looks like a promising candidate - but that its DRM isn’t likely to be fully available until 2008.
Firefox for Windows is a different issue, and one we hope to address by early 2008. An upcoming version of our movie viewer will support Firefox as well as some new features, and I’ll post more on that as we get closer to deployment.”
Turns out, some hackers have found a way to download Netflix streaming videos. As noted in the Rorta forums, someone has figured out how to download the DRM-protected films that Netflix provides to customers.
This is how they’ve done it: find the URL of the video file, download it, get the license key and proceed to the stripping of the DRM protection. Now you can take the video with you on your iPod or other portable device, or just watch it on your computer. The hack still operates within the parameters of Netflix’s subscription allotment. So if you have the $5 per month Netflix plan, you’ll be limited to 5 hours of movie downloads. This means you can max out your hack welcome at 17 hours, if you’ve gotten the $17 per month Netflix plan. Seems a bit unlikely for those smart enough to find this hack to pay $17 a month for Netflix.
The bigger problem with this, however, is the fear on the film studios’ part, as this hackfest could deter some from offering up content to Netflix for streaming access. In other news, a MySpace hacker was recently discovered, and had his account deleted from the social networking site.
