PS (peace) be with you, brother?!.....you can now do one more thing with your PS3....

[NewtonMP2100]

...stream Netflix movies (Xbox 360 already had this for about a year and now available on PS3)....


Netflix movie streaming coming to PlayStation 3

...PlayStation 3 owners will soon be able to stream movies and TV shows from Netflix to their TVs using the gaming console, just as Xbox 360 owners have been able to do for a year.

Sony Corp. and the DVD rental company announced the service Monday and plan to launch it next month. It will be available for free to PlayStation 3 owners who have a Netflix subscription that starts at $9.

Netflix streaming is already available on a broad range of devices, such as the Roku digital video player, Internet-connected TV sets (including Sony's) and Blu-ray players — and the PlayStation 3's archrival, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360. On the Xbox, however, the Netflix streaming is available only to Xbox Live "Gold" members, who pay $50 a year mainly to play games online with friends in other places.

For Netflix Inc., the deal brings millions of potential new customers, to add to the 11.1 million it already has in the United States. About 9 million PlayStation 3 systems have been sold in U.S., and more than 25 million worldwide.

Movie streaming is an increasingly important service for Netflix even though it says it expects to keep renting DVDs until 2030. And Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said he would like the streaming service to be available on all three of the major gaming platforms — the Xbox, the Wii and the PlayStation. Until now, however, the company had an exclusive deal with Microsoft.

"The PlayStation 3 is an amazing video platform," Hastings said in an interview.

This leaves the Wii as the last console without Netflix streaming. But even without it, the Wii is the top-selling console....


STREAM of consciousness....

[vision63]

There's always the specter of Comcast ready to jump on you for enjoying too much streaming content.

[MacDoxy]

i'm sure that sony fans might disagree but i just can't see investing in a sony console anymore-
unless you dont mind piles of consoles stacked up since sony is anti-backwards compatibility. why be able to play old games you paid for when you can spend double on new ones- since when you get ps3 you'll have to start over again from 0. to me the greediness of that does not make up for any features. you may put up with it now, but that will just cause sony to do it again should ps4 come out.. etc..

[Filliam H. Muffman]

My 80 GB PS3 plays PS2 games pretty well. The problem is that the slight difference in controllers (lag, proportionality) means that games do not play quite as well as on a PS2.

The single huge attraction of playing on a PS3 is nearly unlimited memory cards. It allows you to save every level in a game instead of 12 to 16 points if you only have two cards. Even today a 8 MB card lists for about $14 when you can buy a 8 GB flash drive for the same price.

[Mike Johnson]

I don't have any games for my PS3, so compatibility really isn't an issue.

[RAMd®d]

There's always the specter of Comcast ready to jump on you for enjoying too much streaming content.

True enough.

I see the day when you will be paying not just for speed of throughput, but also for the amount of throughput. And Comcast will be there.

If and when terrestrial TV goes away, many of us will be truly screwed.

[kj4btkljv]

RAMd®d wrote:
I see the day when you will be paying not just for speed of throughput, but also for the amount of throughput.

I'd be all for "pay for bandwidth" plans. Unless I'm being a complete ignorant schmuck and believing all the so-called positives of this, I'd think it would work. Could cure us of: massive amounts of SPAM messages sent daily by the millions, thousands upon thousands of gigabytes of movie torrents being downloaded around the world every day, collecting downloaded digital crap by the truckload simply because I can, and more.

It might get my internet cost down at home, since we only surf lightly and check email messages. I upload the occasional website that I'm working on. That's it. I wish I could see how much I'm using, because it can't be too much.

Off my oapbox: now...

Jeff

[(vikm)]

My PS3 plays any game dating back to the PSone that I throw at it. Outside of nostalgia, those early games aren't really that big a deal nor a necessity.

In some eyes, Sony may be the lesser of two evils. I don't know one person that hasn't had to turn in their XBox360 for repairs at least once. Some more than once. Some have had to buy a brand new console. No thanks.

I didn't know Nintendo would allow for someone to play the old 8-bit games on the Wii. If that's correct, cool!

As for the streaming, it makes sense that MS was ahead with the Netflix ability. They had their online for this generation console well ahead of Sony and have been developing it ever since. The streaming is probably not something I'll make use of even if Blockbuster offers it (which is who I switched to after a couple of years of Netflix). Still a cool option for those that want to use it.

[silvarios]

MacDoxy,
The Playstation 3 is still PS1 backwards compatible. Sucks there is no longer PS2 support, but the PS2 slim is only $80-$100. And it is tiny little thing.

Let's be honest, the Wii is primarily backwards compatible because it is a speed bumped GameCube.

The 360 requires the hard drive for backwards compatibility. Not sure of the actual quality of the backwards compatibility support since no one I knows actually plays original Xbox games on their 360.


Nathan

[N-OS X-tasy!]

(vikm) wrote: I don't know one person that hasn't had to turn in their XBox360 for repairs at least once.

You do now.