The Official Netflix Blog: Opt-in for the new Netflix movie player

Friday, October 31, 2008

Opt-in for the new Netflix movie player

Hi, Brent here with an update on our new player for the Mac and PC. We're past the first phase of our beta already, so I'd like to give you a chance to join in. But before doing so you need to consider the following:

There may be bugs. We are logging all errors, but if you run into problems you can help out by posting details here in the blog comments.
Not all movies are available to watch with Silverlight. You may notice errors or lower than normal quality when watching certain titles.
Our new player works on PCs and Intel-based Macs.
Windows users should be aware that if you opt in, you will need to use Silverlight on all the machines you use to watch instantly.

Once you get up and running check out some of our newest content. We recently added a lot more movies, as well as recent episodes of many TV shows including Heroes, CSI and NCIS. You’ll find all these movies & TV episodes under the “Watch Instantly” tab of the website.

So here’s the opt-in link:
www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin

Enjoy!

717 comments:

«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 717 Newer› Newest»

Anonymous said...: For heaven's sake, please quit all the anti-Microsoft bitching. The problem is that there are only recognized Digital Rights Management systems available, and Netflix must use one of them. One is by Microsoft and is used in Silverlight. The other is by Apple.

The REAL problem is that Apple refuses to let anyone use their DRM.

So if you want to bitch, you need to be venting against Apple who is causing Netflix to use Silverlight.; November 5, 2008 8:15 AM
Anonymous said...: I found the issue with the error 8152 "Individualization Failed" error message. It seems to be related to the 2008-004 Airport Extreme Update from late October, or at least it was on my system. This update caused issues with Time Machine and Netflix. I restored my original /System/Libray/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext and IO80211Family.kext (which this update replaces) and the player now works for me.; November 5, 2008 8:54 AM
technicallyhesright said...: I also noticed with the black screen issue the response header for the page part http://www.netflix.com/pages/watchNow/player/silverlight/SLPlayer.xap is timing out. I'm using Safari 4(5526.11.2) on 10.5.5.; November 5, 2008 9:04 AM
Russell said...: So what I am wondering is if I opt in for this on my mac, does that mean the 360 version will not work when it comes out in two weeks?! please let me know before I choose to opt in?; November 5, 2008 12:47 PM
Christen da Costa said...: I've watched a few movies on my Macbook. Since the hardware in this machine isn't exactly robust it's difficult to tell if it's the player or the computer causing the following issues:

- About ever 5 or 10 minutes the player 'hiccups' and the audio goes out of sync and the video becomes jumpy. This seems to be an issue in full screen mode. As soon as I exit full screen the player returns to normal.

- I've tested the Netflix Player and watched movies on a PC. Silverlight, or at least watching movies on a Mac doesn't produce the same quality, at least not yet. I noticed a high amount (all things relative) of Block Noise on day one of the release and some improvements in the last few days (this might be more bandwidth than Netflix tweaking things). I have a 6Mbps download speed from Timewarner, so I don't think the issue is bandwidth, but who knows.

- Again, comparing the Netflix Player against the Mac running Silverlight, I also noticed that static images, out of focus and in the background, were far more blurry (something to do with the compression codec).

I'll keep posting feed back if I find anything else. Next step is to test on a Macbook Pro.

Christen da Costa
www.gadgetreview.com; November 5, 2008 1:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Adding to the post on "Keeping Up Appearances" - also has playback problems on Mac OS & Safari.

Player generally working very well on a reasonably poor DSL - 700kbps max.; November 5, 2008 1:37 PM
Brian Kravets said...: I would definitely prefer a non-silverlight player for mac users.

Why would you use a Microsoft player for MAC users? Quicktime would work MUCH better.

That being said, I've only had a few problems so far. I got errors when trying to watch a bunch of Horror movies. Only about 25% of them worked. Image quality was acceptable when watching episodes of 30 Rock, but I hope it gets better.; November 5, 2008 2:59 PM
Mathew said...: Same problem as mentioned by other users; when fullscreening, it full screens only on what is set as the Primary Display. The old player fullscreened on whichever display the browser was on. Is there any way to fix this? I'm using an Intel-based Powerbook; November 5, 2008 3:21 PM
Anonymous said...: As a mac user, i'm thrilled that netflix is finally allowing us to join the game. i read previously that the reason behind mac not having the player before now was because of DRM issues. i don't know whether that's correct or not, but if so, why is the quality of the video so bad? Playing in media player has a better quality video than silverlight. why was silverlight chosen over any of the other media players? or better yet, why didn't netflix opt to have their own player created? after all, isn't this the delivery option of the future? anyway, thanks again to netflix for their efforts.; November 5, 2008 3:47 PM
Anonymous said...: First movie went perfectly. Every other has audio sync issues. What shocks me is that the audio lags behind the video. You'd think that since the video consumes more bandwidth that the the opposite would be the case!; November 5, 2008 4:59 PM
Mickey said...: Thanks tons for opening up this beta to Mac users! I'm going to echo the previous comments about wanting to use this on an external monitor without needing to move the menu bar or turn on screen mirroring.; November 5, 2008 5:13 PM
A Greener Shade of Geek said...: Nice job NetFlix and Silverlight.

So far so good on my MacBook (10.5.5) and Mac mini (10.4.11). So far I've watched several movies and the only issue I've had is a slight studder every minute or so (looks like one or two dropped frames).

The mini is hooked up to a HD TV, and things look/sound pretty darned good when shown in full screen. Not DVD but not terrible either.

I've also checked on a Vista Laptop, desktop, and an XP desktop. So far all five computers are working fine.

I love the preview mode with the thumbnails -- that makes it very easy to find things. Also it is screaming fast when moving forward or backward (playback starts almost immediately -- it used to take 10 seconds or more prior to this beta).

Overall a nice job. If it gets better than this I will be real happy.

Thanks!; November 5, 2008 7:23 PM
Anonymous said...: While watching multiple TV episodes, the video gets out of sync with the audio and restarting the computer and browser doesn't help. I also know that it is not a problem with the speed of my internet connection or processor since I was using Windows XP via VMWare Fusion to watch previously.

Also, when trying to watch full screen on a multiple monitor setup, it goes full screen on the first monitor, not the monitor that has the window open.

Thanks for the great start.; November 5, 2008 7:25 PM
Bikr said...: This is just ridiculous, I understand "Bugs" crawling out of developing software, but to release to a publically accessable beta, A piece of streaming software who has an irreversable audio/video sync issue, and no option to opt out, is irresponsible! Streaming has become completely unusable for my house and is 20 - 30 seconds out of sync no matter what i try to watch! Numerous posts on this topic are spread throughout this blog entry yet not a single response has come in.. What a waste...; November 5, 2008 7:55 PM
Anonymous said...: I get this when I click on the opt-in link:

"Netflix Site Error
We were unable to process your request. 58
Please go to the Netflix home page by clicking the button below."; November 5, 2008 8:08 PM
Keltose said...: Thanks Netflix! This does me no good. How hard can it be to support playback for Linux under Firefox!!!!!!!!!!!

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! many media PC's are Linux.; November 5, 2008 8:43 PM
Sanjay said...: The video is choppy to the point of being unwatchable. Nothing I've tried works. Argh!; November 5, 2008 11:20 PM
Anonymous said...: The big problem is more and more ISP's going to capped data I cant see how the streaming will ever take off. ATT just announced a cap of 150gig a month. Also my cousin is on comcast and when they announced the 250gig data cap he called them and in conversation asked what about netflix streaming and the guy said oh know you cant do that. Why would anyone invest in a box or a dvd player that will stream the netflix titles if they cannot use the service because they are data capped. This is a problem netflix and other such companies are goin to have to get very vocal over or they will not be in business for the forseeable future; November 6, 2008 1:56 AM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for putting the beta option out there. I have a MacPro Intel and all I get is a blank screen saying that it is loading...then "done". Still just a blank screen. This happens in Firefox and Safari on my computer. I've disabled other add-ons to see if there was a conflict and it did not fix it.
Also, captioning (for deaf people like me) is a requirement.
Thanks!; November 6, 2008 5:09 AM
Anonymous said...: A couple questions and comments:

1 Are you limited to watching a movie just one time? I started watching one but was interrupted. When I came back the next day to finish it, the option to stream it was gone. Is that a limitation on repeat viewing, and if so at what point can you watch again? That's a major problem if you can't even finish a movie you only partially watched.

2 Along the same lines, is there an option to have it remember where you left off if you are interrupted?

3 Right now you can't do anything when the movie is first buffering, this is a big pain when you don't want to start at the beginning since it has to buffer, then fast forward, then buffer again. Would it be possible for the player to allow fast forwarding immediately instead of forcing it to buffer a big chunk at the beginning that you may not want to watch?

4 Is there any way to clear your Recently Watched list?

Thanks.; November 6, 2008 5:13 AM
Russell said...: so I don't know if it's my connection or what but it works perfectly for me! I don't have a complaint yet, watched first season of heroes and it's been coming through in DVD quality. I am also watching full screen on HD tv and my roomate actually asked if I bought heroes on DVD! Great, but no one answered my question about xbox 360 cause I want to use that more because of HD streaming! I can't wait for that!; November 6, 2008 7:56 AM
BarBaby said...: Problem report:
"The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill"
has a synch error when using the instant play. I have tried several other titles with no problems - in fact I am very impressed with the streaming capability and the UI design. Well done Netflix, it was worth the wait for us Mac-types.

[Using fast MacMini C2D 2GHz, 4GBRAM, but a slow wireless connection, basic DSL with an old wireless airport extreme).; November 6, 2008 8:07 AM
BarBaby said...: confirming report of "Anonymous" on November 5, 2008 7:25 PM

Multiple TV episodes /audio synch issues.

(I watched Dr. Who "The Three Doctors" and the audio went way out of synch by the fourth episode.)

Still a fan, still happy! :); November 6, 2008 8:11 AM
Emi said...: In the few minutes I've played with it, I'm much happier. It hasn't crashed my PC, the quality is infinitely better (I have an old piece of junk PC I use, since I'm a Mac user now), and I have actually been able to acquire the license (something that only happened twice in the old player).

However, I am curious as to why PPC Macs aren't supported, since Silverlight is available for PPC. Is it really that different?; November 6, 2008 9:09 AM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the player and the opportunity to try it. At my office (imac core 2 duo 10.5.5, safari 3.1.2) the download, movie playing, all functions were good to go right away. At home (MBP core 2 duo 10.5.5, safari 3.1.2) download and install went fine, but even after rebooting my MBP, restarting safari several times, I would choose a movie and be told I hadn't upgraded silverlight. So I deleted silverlight, redownloaded, reinstalled, chose my movie (superbad I had been watching at my office) the player initites but then i get the 8107 157 Login information is incorrect or whatever. I see many have the same problem. My office iMac continues to play movies just fine. I have seen others suggest firefox as a possible temp fix which I will try. Seems so odd that both computers have the same chip, and are running the same versions of programs but one doesnt function at all.; November 6, 2008 11:55 AM
Anonymous said...: I sure hope that the speed of the buffering speeds up. I buffer at 6 times per movie, and the lips don't match the words. I have high speed internet and a smokin fast computer. Is there anything I can do differently?; November 6, 2008 3:18 PM
Anonymous said...: I got a couple of bugs that I'm not sure are all silver light related.

When I tried to watch Heroes: Season 1 episodes 18 & 19 the ambient and musical track were there but the dialogue audio was missing.; November 6, 2008 6:10 PM
Pao Pow said...: I installed Silverlight 2 on my Intel Mac, verified by the installer and by looking in the /Internet Plug-Ins folder. I usually use Safari, but Firefox also did not work. I am able to view some (not all) of the content at http://silverlight.net/Showcase/. When I attempt to view Instant content at Netflix, I get a black, blank page. I noticed that some of the Microsoft sites needed the "Block Pop-Up Windows" option off. The Status Bar of the browser says "Done" with no errors noted. I have re-installed using the Root User and repaired permissions as well. Any suggestions?; November 6, 2008 7:09 PM
gjetson said...: I've made a terrible mistake. I joined on the beta on my mac, and now my main windows pc in the living room is too slow to show the movies (silverlight sucks on it!) Help! I can't opt-out. I can't watch movies anymore. boo hoo.; November 6, 2008 7:12 PM
sblom said...: I'm disappointed by how buggy the Silverlight experience is, and seriously regret having opted in.

I've been trying to watch an episode of Jericho Season 2 (Jennings & Rall), and the audio and video have drifted further and further out of sync as the episode has worn on.

Now I'm having problems with the video stopping with a message that my Internet connection has slowed down so it's switching to a lower bit rate. The buffering attempt after that never finishes. All other Internet applications (including other web sites, and even video streams) work fine despite that error message.

Please _please_ add an option to opt out until you have it up to a _real_ beta quality. Right now, with your un-QA'd transcodings, and your server scaling problems, it's Alpha at best.; November 6, 2008 7:20 PM
Mike Fisher said...: Testing with a Mac Mini.

I was watching a movie in Full Screen Mode, paused it, and the screen saver activated (which canceled Full Screen Mode). After returning to the machine, I tried to restart the movie in Full Screen Mode. The movie started playing back, but showed a fixed screen (with the audio continuing).

I attempted to switch from browser mode to Full Screen Mode a few times, but did not see changes in the video.

A few minutes later, the system needed to re-buffer, and after that, Full Screen Mode started working correctly again.; November 6, 2008 7:40 PM
Mike Fisher said...: Also, I'd like to second the feature request that Full Screen Mode (at least) be able to trap the Apple Remote signals for playback control.

Thanks, and great job!; November 6, 2008 7:41 PM
Anonymous said...: Same complaints as most. Screensaver is exceedingly annoying.

I'm also getting much more stuttering of the video and some small loss in quality.

Specs: Firefox 2.0.0.17, Win XP Pro SP3, GeFroce 8400 GS; November 6, 2008 9:58 PM
Jeremy Mathews said...: Thanks for the opt-in option. Mac compatibility has been a long time coming. Here are a few issues that you may want to look into.

I use a 2.4 GHz Macbook Pro, 10.5.4, and have used the player with nothing else running besides Safari or Firefox.

-At high-speed, the picture quality is quite good, but suffers from a consistent appearance of glitchy lines. I don't know if this is connected to Silverlight or Netflix's player.

-For the sake of Beta testing, I hooked up to a slower connection, and had some problems. It took a really long time to start up, and seemed to be loading the high-quality version instead of a lower-quality version. This might have just been a one time thing or it might have just been too slow.; November 6, 2008 11:47 PM
Anonymous said...: I was *very* excited to hear this so I could properly segregate browsers and function. I've got a 6mb connection and really only use Netflix player on two computers - both running Windows, but there's no way I'd be able to function if switching to full screen is going to eat the primary display.

I use three displays on this machine, my wife uses two (but will probably switch to three in the next month). Switching the player to full screen should use the ACTIVE display, not the PRIMARY display. Fix that and I'll reconsider. In my experience with MCE and other Silverlight video, I've been very pleased and impressed. I just can't afford to lose access to everything on my primary display.

One other thing... it hasn't been answered whether activating Silverlight will affect my Roku. Can we get a clear answer, please?; November 7, 2008 12:08 AM
GP said...: I have watched 3 movies now and each one is interrupted by an unknown error and shuts the movie off.

just wanted to pass it along.

Oh, and PLEASE get HD streaming up fast!; November 7, 2008 1:47 AM
Mike said...: PS3 PLEASE!; November 7, 2008 5:59 AM
technicallyhesright said...: For all those with the screensaver problem, just use Caffeine to temporarily stop the screensaver while you're watching a netflix movie in the silverlight player. I can't get the player to work, so good luck :); November 7, 2008 7:00 AM
BarBaby said...: Continued audio synch problems on multi-episodic streams. So that's looking like a pretty consistent problem.

A workaround for those with screensaver issues - when I started watching programs on Hulu I had the same annoyance - I downloaded an applet called CAFFEINE. from www.lightheadsw.com
It puts an icon in the titlebar that shuts down your screensaver (and screen dimming) either until you hit it again, or for a specified amount of time. Very nice little program.

PS: system is macmini c2d 2GHz, 4 GB RAM, Firefox v3.0.3. Slow DSL and slower wireless router, Video streaming quality is always "Basic."; November 7, 2008 7:48 AM
craig said...: Wow thanks Netflix! I have been using it for the last few days and I think it work fairly well. I did have some minor lag time issues with Spiderman 3 during the fast action sequences. Probably no more than I would with the old watch-now though.

Watching on a mac mini HTPC setup and it looks pretty good so far. It would be nice to see Netflix move towards HD streaming in the future--even if it means charging people a separate plan for it.; November 7, 2008 8:25 AM
Mike said...: I did not receive the option to opt in or out. I have been using Watch Instantly for almost a year. I even set up a PC connected to my Home Theater system. When I launched "Watch Instantly" the other day, I was forced to install Silverlight 2. I didn't really think anything of it. But now all Netflix Watch Instantly videos play choppy. Nice, Netflix. Real Nice.; November 7, 2008 8:55 AM
Drew said...: getting the "Black Screen" like other posts here. MacBookPro Intel CoreDuo, 2GB RAM.

Safari 3.1.2; black static screen.
Error Console in Firefox 3.0.3 has CSS errors:

"Warning: Unknown property 'zoom'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://www.netflix.com/layout/css/pkg-Common-f3e12-217806.css?v=217806
Line: 1"

or

"Warning: Error in parsing value for property 'cursor'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://www.netflix.com/layout/css/pkg-Common-f3e12-217806.css?v=217806
Line: 1"

otherwise nothing I can tell of from here. Any leads?; November 7, 2008 11:30 AM
Lisa said...: Watching movies on my mac has worked great until today. Right now I am trying to finish watching a movie - gone baby gone and the movie opens great, but it won't move. Is stuck on where I left off.
Thx,; November 7, 2008 12:16 PM
Lisa said...: I just left a post about the movie gone baby gone getting stuck while trying to watch it. I figured it out, if I try to watch the movie and listen to it on a bluetooth device - I can't. If bluetooth is enabled and hooked up to my headset, the movie won't play. Funny. Wonder if this can be fixed.
Thanks.; November 7, 2008 12:22 PM
Anonymous said...: I experienced a few 8051 errors while watching Jane Eyre:
http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70063030&trkid=226890
Episodes 6 and 8 are not playing at all even after restarting the browser. Also there are issues with the audio synch on most of the episodes. Using Mac, Firefox 3.0.3; November 7, 2008 3:51 PM
Anonymous said...: I was watching the movie "Network" pre-silverlight and it was fine, but unfortunately now it is out of sync by a few seconds... Every other movie I've watched has been fine though. So far this is a great service, just hope my internet provider doesn't start bandwidth restrictions.; November 7, 2008 5:07 PM
Anonymous said...: The audio on Mars Attacks! is off by about 10 seconds with Silverlight.; November 7, 2008 6:37 PM
PJ said...: I'm seeing an Error Code 8051 on "Teeth" (http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Teeth/70059630?trkid=226890), right after the screen shows "Downloading Movie information".

I am also seeing pretty frequent retraining -- "Your internet connection has slowed. We are adjusting playback to avoid further interruption." -- after less than a minute of streaming.

I'm running an iMac 20" Intel with OS X 10.5.5 and Safari 3.1.2. My internet connection is 7 meg DSL from Qwest; November 7, 2008 7:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Error code 8052. Yes, eight zero five TWO.

Firefox 3.0.3, OS 10.4.11, old 2GHZ MacBook.; November 7, 2008 8:13 PM
jbo05 said...: The only issue I've encountered has been a lag between audio and video. Seems to occur most often with the Starz videos - the Starz intro audio plays, but the movie content begins immediately, causing a the audio to lag behind the video. In other cases (CSI:NY) the video lagged behind the audio a second or two. No problems with certain content (30 Rock).

MacBook 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 5 Mbps cable connection.; November 7, 2008 9:27 PM
Christopher said...: Though I am sure that I am mirroring other comments I like the new player. I love the capabilities of Silverlight and look forward to sometime using it in my own development work. My one complaint is that the screen saver is not deactivated when watching a movie. If you can fix this issue it gets an A in my book.; November 7, 2008 9:35 PM
Anonymous said...: The biggest problem is the rebuffering. It seems to want to rebuff every 3 minutes or so. I run a very fast Dell laptop with 4gb ram, 300 gb hard drive, and a T9100 processor. Is there something wrong with my setup?; November 8, 2008 9:02 AM
Anonymous said...: I have dual monitors, and I would like to run the movie full screen on one of them. However, when I click somewhere on the other monitor, the movie exits fullscreen mode. This is annoying.

thanks,
Matt; November 8, 2008 9:31 AM
DCR said...: The biggest problem I have with the new player is the irritating "sorry, that title is not available to watch instantly. Please try another title" message when I click on a "Play" button.; November 8, 2008 9:47 AM
Sola said...: I seem to be experiencing much longer audio lags than most people have reported, sometimes 90 seconds. That's well past annoying and right into unwatchable.

On last year's MacBook, 10.4.11, 1.83ghz.; November 8, 2008 5:04 PM
Brian said...: Same issues as many people have listed above. For those of us who jumped the gun prematurely - Why's there no opt-out option?

If I could go back to the older version, I'd do so in a heartbeat.; November 8, 2008 5:32 PM
Adrian T said...: Serious Lip synch problems here and full screen only gets rid of the skin, but the video doesn't stretch to fit the screen.

Lip synch is bad enough that it is already .5 seconds out within the first seconds of the movie.

I'm trying to watch westworld.; November 8, 2008 7:32 PM
jenbooks said...: Nope. I won't use Silverlight, period.; November 8, 2008 8:23 PM
Anonymous said...: Please move the Back to Browsing button away from other controls, like Full Screen on the Mac. It's too easy to hit the Back to Browsing when you try to hit Full Screen.; November 8, 2008 8:55 PM
Nick said...: I too am seeing audio/video sync issues. I watched about five minutes of the TV series "Crash" and it was fine (I mean, the show was terrible so I stopped watching, but the audio was synced with the video so no technical problems). This worked fine in Firefox on Vista.

When watching Broken English today, however, the audio is about 58 seconds behind the video. Both Firefox and IE on Vista showed the same audio lag problem.

Is there some feedback tool we should be using to report these problems or are you just going to sift through blog comments?; November 8, 2008 9:35 PM
Cool Fool said...: OS X and Silverlight make a great combination.

I had been watching movies running XP via Parallels, however, I find that FF and Safari produce a better quality picture. There is no stutter, or any other artifacts with either browser.

Since my connection speed (2400/481) has not changed I must assume the improvement is due to Silverlight browser combinations. It is no secret that IE 7 is the slowest browser on the market.

As for Woolery's comments of 10/31, below...who cares who wrote the code for Silverlight. If you don't like it, run Netflix on XP. While I am a dedicated Mac user I will not hesitate to run any code that makes my my system more functional.

GOOD JOB NETFLIX!!!!; November 8, 2008 9:46 PM
GadgetComa said...: Thanks for working on the Mac version and opening up the beta! Netflix Mac compatibility was the last thing I need to completely ditch my PCs. (I know Parallels or Fusion would work, but they're memory hogs - especially for constant use on a media center.)

The Mac version works great on my Mac Pro. But, the PC version of Netflix w/Silverlight has problems. I have a 2.4G PC with Windows XP and 1G of RAM. The new Netflix player stutters and freezes a lot on this PC. The same PC ran the old Netflix player without problems. Hopefully this is just a beta bug.; November 9, 2008 6:44 AM
Chad said...: Silverlight worked right away on my PC and loaded up quickly. One bug so far: it doesn't prevent my screen saver from coming on.

Thanks for posting the Beta - it works much better with DRM.; November 9, 2008 7:23 AM
Anonymous said...: I have seen a few movies on my Intel-based Mac and it works fine. But they only seem to be stereo rather than Dolby Digital 5.1 or more. Will this be improved in the future?; November 9, 2008 10:00 AM
Anonymous said...: I have an extremely fast DSL connection, and I am getting 'high' quality rates through Safari on a fast computer. This is a problem with Netflix entirely—not my Internet connection or computer.

The quality is not even close to the quality of video streaming from Hulu. Video is not smooth. Compression artifacts are clearly visible.

I am not a video snob. I sincerely hope Netflix fixes the poor quality problems that many users either don't see, lie to themselves about, or get used to.

Hulu got over this hurdle. I hope Netflix can do the same.; November 9, 2008 11:10 AM
Anonymous said...: While watching "2 Days in the Valley" the image suddenly stopped working (but not the audio). I got the message "DirectShowSource : The video Graph failed to restart after seeking. Status = 0xc00d080d". It happened at approximately 1:01:40 into the movie. I run the viewer using Firefox 3.03 on a newish 24" imac with the highest connection rating (according to the Netflix site). I've been watching the Netflix Instant Play movies for a few days, and this is the first time I've run into the player not working. It's like pulling teeth and nails to find a site for beta testers to report!!! You need to set up a technical page where beta testers can report, so we actually think you care.; November 9, 2008 2:44 PM
Anonymous said...: The silverlight player is worthless on my older system even though it is better than the min specs given. Not having an opt-out option is irresponsible and I might be canceling my account as a result.; November 9, 2008 4:48 PM
Anonymous said...: Those of you that are complaining about Linux, PowerPC, etc... support. Silverlight IS cross platform capable!!!!! What is the problem here? :(; November 9, 2008 5:30 PM
ncr100 said...: The audio is out of sync when I watch the second episode of Dr Who Ribos Operation that starts at 25:41 in the video linked below

http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=60023397&trkid=226889

Mac 10.5, Firefox, Silverlight 2.0.

It's likely the appending of the second episode of video is breaking the time sync.

Makes watching the video not worthwhile.

Otherwise, nice that buffering is faster, and the thumbnails for jogging through the videos.; November 9, 2008 7:13 PM
Anonymous said...: I've been using the anpark MyNetlix plugin (which has been pretty awesome)... Unfortuneatly, the
Silverlight player doesn't work with my Media Center Remote and the system's screensaver kicks in every 10-15 minutes. Otherwise the Silverlight player has been pretty stable.; November 9, 2008 8:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Watching "An Evening with Kevin Smith", audio is way out of sync. Firefox 3, OS X 10.5.5, Silverlight, MacBook Pro 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo. Otherwise this is awesome! Thanks!; November 9, 2008 9:58 PM
Bill said...: The sound and video on Westworld are out of sync.

Capricorn One will play for a few seconds then throw up an error saying to call customer service.

Macmini (C2D 1.83 ghz, 2 GB RAM). OS 10.5.5. Safari 3.

I'm excited about the new Mac compatibility. Wish MS wasn't involved for a variety of reasons!; November 9, 2008 10:44 PM
Jonathan said...: Plays nicely on my Macbook.

Unfortunately, still not usable for me until subtitle/CC support arrives. :-(; November 10, 2008 1:52 PM
matt said...: So far, so good. Only noticed one bug.. Sometimes when switching to full screen the video freezes, but the movie and sound continue playing.. I have to exit full screen then try again. Only happens about 10% of the time.

Also if you can get the player to work with the play/pause buttons on the keyboard/remote that would be a huge plus.; November 10, 2008 4:13 PM
jupp1703 said...: Glad to be able to stream again. I just dumped my 2 PCs for a MacBook Pro.

The only issues I've noticed are minor. Some slight interference on occasion. Straight lines across the screen with a bit of an audio crackle as the lines pop up. It also looks a bit grainier. I think that's likely my new setup. This laptop has a wide screen. The picture isn't letter boxed like it was on my Dell. It's a good bit larger making it appear grainier I suspect.

The Silverlight player seems a bit more stable than the old player. I would on occasion get long holds with the "Your internet connection has slowed...." message. If my internet connection is still slowing, why would that change afterall, this player copes better.; November 10, 2008 8:18 PM
Daniel said...: Halfway through "12 Days in the Valley" watching via the new Mac Watch Instantly, the video went blank with the following red text across the top:

"DirectShowSource : The video Graph failed to restart after seeking. Status = 0x300d080d"; November 11, 2008 5:04 AM
Anonymous said...: On Safari Version 3.0.4 (5523.15)
Everything appears fine, then after buffering it says "Setting up your movie player" Under the NETFLIX with the video screen having the red background.

It seems to be stuck at that point.

On FireFox 3.0.3 It gets to the same point and crashes firefox.

Could I have something wrong? This is on a Mac with intel core 2 duo. 10.5.2 Leopard.

Thanks for bringing this to Mac, please help with this bug.; November 11, 2008 8:59 AM
McLar3n said...: I am finally able to watch movies on both my home PC and my Apple laptop. It is a wonderful thing. However, I have noticed with several of the films I have attempted to watch that:

1.The audio is out of sync on the following
a. Liar Liar
b. Raw
c. Batman: The Movie
2.On my MacBook (2.0 GHz CoreDuo, 2GB ram) when switching to fullscreen while playing the video freezes but the audio continues.

Ironic that Microsoft was the solution to the Apple issue. Thanks for finally getting it worked out, anxious for more content and improvements.; November 11, 2008 1:28 PM
matthew said...: This is HUGE and it works great. Anyone hear any rumblings about iPhone compatibility ?; November 11, 2008 2:28 PM
Robert said...: I been playing and toying around with a idea on my site with video, I think maybe going with a flash video style would be a beter idea, there is a ways to keep people from stealing the movie from a FLV file.

Plus it opens to the doors other users from all sides of the computer market since it ran on mac, pc, and linux systems.

Could be another path to go in to, with the use of netbooks coming out, not saying do away with silverlight, but giving another option to try out; November 11, 2008 5:16 PM
Bob Rotenberg said...: After several successful streams on the MAC beta, I ran into a sync problem. Voice behind picture by a good 5 seconds! Could not repeat the problem with several other movies and tv streams. Cuplrit was "The Girl from Monday."; November 11, 2008 5:56 PM
dave said...: i'm getting an issue on my imac where the audio is about 4 or 5 seconds behind the video. basically makes it unwatchable :(

as far as the interface and everything, i like it. i cant wait until it actually works :D; November 11, 2008 6:12 PM
Dave said...: Silverlight seems to run slower on my Mac than running it on Windows using VMWare Fusion. My connection isn't that great, but watching a movie on Windows, didn't seem to be affected. When I switched, the movies that I watch now stop every 5 minutes to buffer. I find that weird since I wouldn't have that problem before. Also, I got a weird echo of all audio today. I was watching 30 Rock episodes and each one that I tried had the audio echoing like if I was at a gym. I thought it was part of the show, but the other episodes I tried did the same. Anyone have the same problem?; November 11, 2008 10:13 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm really upset that there is not a way to deauthorize a machine even for tech support. I have to wait a week because there are still problems with osx between safari and silverlight... thats a little crappy; November 12, 2008 12:45 AM
Anonymous said...: I am not commenting to complain, only to point out a simple fact: when Netflix forces everyone to go to the Silverlight player, I will be cancelling my subscription. This is because I use Watch Now exclusively on Media Center Extenders (I don't use the DVD service), and Silverlight will break my Media Center Netflix plugins. I have no interest in adding yet another STB (Roku) to my setups, or buying new Blueray, Tivo, or Xbox's. I will sign up again when Netflix offers a MCE plugin (if ever). Hoping they have a plan...; November 12, 2008 11:39 AM
andrew said...: Tried to watch An Evening with Kevin Smith. The audio was horribly out of sync with the video!; November 12, 2008 1:57 PM
Keith said...: Please add PowerPC support for mac! Thanks!; November 12, 2008 9:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Intel Mac
OSX 10.5.3

"Individualization Failed. UNable to play back protected (DRM) Content"

Error: 8152; November 12, 2008 9:24 PM
chadguay said...: don't work on my macbook. useless.; November 13, 2008 9:38 AM
Matt said...: You need to raise the min specs. I am running an AMD 2000+ (1.6Ghz) with 1GB of RAM which is nicely optimized and kept clean but I am getting horrible playback with choppy video and sound sync issues. CPU is running at 100% as well. Internet connection is good and I never had this problem with the old watch instantly setup.

There really should be an opt-out option for this beta because in my case this might be the nail in the coffin for my account.; November 13, 2008 9:58 AM
Drew said...: Great, so now instead of giving me a black screen, it says "Player Error
We could not load the movie player. Please visit our help page for more details.
ErrorCode: 1001" The Help page asks you to call a number to troubleshoot.

Since this seems to big a wide problem that has been acknowledged with a new Error screen, can't you modify the Help section to reflect common reasons other than Suitcase?; November 13, 2008 11:08 AM
NiteShdw said...: I also want to know why there is no OPT-OUT!

The new Silverlight player works at original size, but when I try to make it bigger or full screen, my CPU usage on my 1.8Ghz dual-core CPU jumps to 100% and the video completely freezes up.

VC1 is a much more complicated encoding scheme, so it uses significantly more processing power to decode (a la H.263 vs H.264).

With the old player I could easily watch videos at full screen.

Now, I basically won't use Instant Watch anymore!; November 13, 2008 12:57 PM
Diana Draw, Graphic Designer said...: I've also been having the audio sync problem that others had. I was watching "Jimmy Dore: Citizen Jimmy" (http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70101329&trkid=480652), and the audio is going faster than the video, right off the bat. If you "scrub" the player line, the audio & video do sync up for a few seconds, but then go right back to being crappy/out of sync in the blink of an eye.

I'm running the Silverlight player on Firefox 3.0.3 on a Mac (OSX 10.5.5, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo). I have the highest internet connection speed on Netflix. With this setup, it seems like I shouldn't have problems...but hey, guess that's why it's BETA. Hope this helps.; November 13, 2008 3:26 PM
Anonymous said...: I would also like to see Linux support for the player. If Hulu can do it, you have no excuse.; November 13, 2008 11:00 PM
Matthew said...: Anyone having issues with Watch Instantly (Silverlight) on a MacBook Air? I'm getting pixelation on this machine, but not on any of my other Macs.; November 14, 2008 12:12 PM
jada said...: Media Initialization Error (Code 8216) watching Saiyuki Episode 31.

Funny thing is I was able to watch half of it before the error came up.; November 14, 2008 1:53 PM
Anonymous said...: SilverLight, Proceed with caution.
I joined the beta under Netflix suggestion, THEY DID NOT TELL ME YOU CAN GET OUT. Support could not fix it and they also will not revert you back. I can no longer use watch now. The customer still wins in the end, 12/5 is my renewal and I will close me account.; November 14, 2008 5:40 PM
Another Seminarian said...: I'm having the audio sync errors too, but only on select titles. Thing of it is, it also happens on my bootcamp partition, so I think it is an issue with silverlight or just the encoding for silverlight.; November 14, 2008 6:51 PM
Travis Rosenbaum said...: I cannot watch anything on any of my computers. I get: "Individualization Failed. Unable to play back protected (DRM) content.

ErrorCode 8152 "; November 14, 2008 6:54 PM
gidget said...: So very happy to see this for Mac. I'm very pleased with the video quality, but I am having problems.

So far seems to be only in full screen. Screen will go black after about 5-10 minutes of watching a movie. No way to exit mack to Finder, can only power down. I notice the audio is always muted when I reboot as well? Had same problem in both Safari 3.2 and Firefox 3.0.3.

Running a Macbook Pro 2 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2 gb RAM, 10.5.5. Nothing obvious in the logs. Would be more than happy to provide more info if needed.; November 14, 2008 7:01 PM
Anonymous said...: I am having a terrible time with the audio getting out of sync with the video... any suggestions?; November 14, 2008 7:09 PM
Anonymous said...: I enjoyed watching online movies for many months, but using Silverlight now makes the experience unbearable. I have an IBM Thinkpad with IE and high-speed internet connection.

Problems that I now have:
1. Picture quality is horrible - extremely choppy/blocky/grainy/blurry, especially in "Full Screen" mode.

2. A black screen screensaver appears every 10-15 minutes.

3. Many times the audio is not in sync with the video.

I loved watching Netflix movies online, and now the experience is ruined. I am seriously considering canceling my Netflix subscription.; November 14, 2008 9:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Having some issues with the silverlight on my Windows Vista Machine 64 bit within firefox. The video quality is pretty poor and the sound is about 1-2 seconds ahead of the video, very annoying, and makes the move (War, Inc.) unwatchable.; November 14, 2008 11:21 PM
Jenn said...: Joined Netflix today (!) to take advantage of streaming Netflix rentals using my Xbox 360 (!!!!!). Just installed the Silverlight player to my MacBook Pro. Works great in Firefox! I'm so excited! <3; November 14, 2008 11:26 PM
Nelson said...: Tried 2 movies on Safari 3.2 and Firefox 2.0.0.8. Excellent video quality, but in both cases, the audio trailed the video by 4 or 5 seconds. Thoughts on a fix?; November 15, 2008 1:13 PM
Miriam Swann said...: Hi,

Thanks for offering this option for Mac users finally. I'm thrilled to help Beta test.

A consistent bug that I run into is that if I pause or rewind or fast-forward, the video and audio will no longer be in synch. Sometimes it's just a beat or two, and sometimes it's can be a few minutes difference. (It was sort of funny when I was watching Singin' in the Rain, but otherwise, it's upsetting. There doesn't seem to be any way for me to fix it myself.)

I run Mac OS 10.1.11 with Firefox 3.0.4.

I look forward to your; November 15, 2008 1:19 PM
ajonline87 said...: it looks pretty cool but some function are no longer available i miss being able to lower the volume with my arrow key; November 15, 2008 1:59 PM
seán said...: It is absolutely absurd that, still to this day, there is not an option for power pc macs! Essentially, Netflix is telling power pc mac owners that they are less significant customers for not owning the right computer.; November 15, 2008 2:25 PM
Anonymous said...: HI ,

For couple of the British mysteries ( Albert Campion and Peter Wimpsey), the sound and video are off sync. If you can fix this, that will be great. Many thanks; November 15, 2008 10:11 PM
Anonymous said...: Having same "Invalid login" error for all media on Firefox 2.0.0.18 on Win XP Pro SP3. Works fine on IE7.; November 16, 2008 10:59 AM
Joe White said...: Just had a few error codes come up on my Mac silverlight player. I had called into tech support, and they had informed me that the error codes for 8051 and 8052 mean that the content has not yet been updated to work with the silverlight player, however tech support assured me that within the next few days the remaining videos would all be available for play.; November 16, 2008 12:02 PM
Anonymous said...: THANK YOU! While not thrilled about installing Silverlight, I understand the reasons behind that choice. The streaming service is so much better now that I can run it on my Mac without using a virtual machine.; November 16, 2008 12:05 PM
jane said...: Thanks for letting Mac subscribers in on the Beta! I haven't had time to try much yet, but I did watch parts of "Strangers on a Train" (I had seen the rest before but missed the beginning and end). Of course, a B&W film from 1951 isn't one to judge picture quality. On the first try, using Safari, the picture froze, while the sound continued, and all I could do was a forced shutdown. But the second try, using Firefox, went flawlessly. So I don't know whether that was a fluke or a Safari problem. I like the player -- jumping ahead to the end was easy and very fast. There were some small hitches in the fast-paced carousel sequence at the end, but, as net streaming goes, they weren't too bad.; November 16, 2008 12:29 PM
Anonymous said...: Playback is so slow and the sound is bad/video quality is also not as good.

20 min into movie and already paused at least 3 times for buffering and now "cannot connect to the Netflix movie server"

Not happy!; November 16, 2008 4:46 PM
mlfrancis said...: Maybe I should have read more, but I didn't see where accepting the beta would affect all machines I use to watch online videos. Unfortunatly, after opting in, I've not been able to view a complete movie without rebuffering, poor video quality, or completely stopping in the middle of the video. I've not had any other internet problems and DSL reports reports normal 3mb/sec. I only wish there were a way to opt back out. If you're thinking of doing it, don't!; November 16, 2008 5:05 PM
kerok said...: get the following error when trying to watch "The Marines":

There is a problem with this movie. Please contact Netflix technical support at 866-579-7113 for assistance. ErrorCode: 8052.

Trying to watch this movie on my Roku player causes it to crash the player and cause a reboot whenever I get to the same place in the movie that causes the Silverlight player to hang.

No I didn't call, I hate calling customer service lines.; November 17, 2008 12:42 AM
Anonymous said...: I had nothing to lose by opting in. I don't have Windows on my Mac.

I tried watching two episodes of The Office. Each one was interrupted MULTIPLE times to rebuffer (because my internet connection "slowed"). The connection to Netflix's server would get lost repeatedly as well.

I thought the quality was acceptible, but I am finding things to be pretty unwatchable and added everything in my instant queue to my DVD queue.

I am glad that Mac users are getting recognized and I realize that this is just an early version and bugs will be worked out. I never felt that I was being excluded from a service that I was paying for, because as far as I am concerned I joined Netflix to rent DVDs and the instant queue is a "value added" service. I didn't even know they offered it until well after I joined.

-Liz; November 17, 2008 7:35 AM
zer0 said...: Netflix Please Allow users in Puerto Rico to use Instant Watch....

We can rent from the US xbox, PS3, and iTunes Stores...We can use Hulu.com... and yet we can't use your service.

I would love it... and will make my life easier. :); November 17, 2008 11:55 AM
Anonymous said...: works great on my two year old refurbished macbook w/firefox.

only problem i get is often when i switch to full screen, it freezes (until i hit escape and then go back and it keeps working); November 17, 2008 5:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Having sound sync issues with the movie "Broken English" - I think the sound is delayed by 20 sec. or so, can't be sure since I've never seen it before. At first I thought it was an arty way of editing the film, but then caught on that it was just the video and audio not aligning. :P Anyway, it happens when playing both in full screen and window modes. I've got an imac, OSX 10.5.5, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Silverlight on Firefox 3.0.3 with the highest internet connection speed on Netflix.; November 17, 2008 10:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Wow, the picture is much, much better. Great work, Netflix. Everything works fine on my Vista PC. I will definitely be more inclined to watch movies online now.; November 17, 2008 11:13 PM
7christian said...: I'm experiencing the same audio sync problems, but it's the video that is lagging behind the audio for me. I'm using an intel mac.; November 18, 2008 2:57 AM
Anonymous said...: Macbook Pro, 10.5.5 Intel Duo core

Worked great watching Weeds and Walmart: The high cost of low prices. Today went to watch Hell House and the video quality is not great, but worse is that the audio is way off. So far off I can't continue to watch it.; November 18, 2008 2:07 PM
fletc3her said...: This works very well. Thank you for continuing to work on this. Now, make sure you let Microsoft know that canceling Silverlight for Mac is not an option. Those of us who have been around remember how Windows Media was at first cross platform and then was made Windows only once they had secured sufficient market share. Microsoft will screw you.; November 18, 2008 2:33 PM
fletc3her said...: Apple does not make a streaming video DRM. People who say they do, including Netflix executives, are simply lying or don't know what the hell they are talking about.

In fact there are several options. For example, Real has long has a cross platform compatible DRM scheme. Microsoft was cross platform before they decided to be Windows only, and now is cross platform again. There are other options as well.; November 18, 2008 2:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Highest DSL connection, iMac Intel core duo with Firefox: audio is running ahead of the video on "RAW (Eddie Murphy)". This is happening with select titles - some have fine audio, and others the sync is waaaaay off.; November 18, 2008 2:37 PM
Anonymous said...: "Picture quality was great ("high"), with the only noticeable flaw being some horizontal artifacts when there was a fast lateral move by the camera. "

I have noticed this as well. I'm on a new Macbook Pro (late 2008), 2.4 GHz, 5MB/s Broadband.

In every other way, it seems great! But, this tearing effect is a problem. It might be a Silverlight issue? I don't see it on fullscreen Flash content.; November 18, 2008 3:06 PM
Bill said...: the movie Soldier the video and Voise is out of sync.; November 18, 2008 3:15 PM
B.D. said...: I really like being able to finally use Watch Now on my Macs, but I have been a tad bit disappointed with the video quality on my new Al Macbook. It seems to refresh oddly during fast moving scenes - I can see lines were the screen is refreshing. Video that is played elsewhere on my Macbook doesn't suffer from this effect.; November 18, 2008 6:48 PM
SixDeafTaxis said...: When I skip ahead on the Mac, it frequently gets the audio/video out of sync and makes it unusable.; November 18, 2008 7:02 PM
theboywil said...: Nirvana: Teen Spirit: the interviews doesn't play properly (tried it on iMac with safari & firefox, and also on Black Macbook).

The picture appears as if it scrambled in extreme repeating diagonal patterns..

It plays fine on my 360 with the NXE update

(everything else I have tried has worked fine on the Macs); November 18, 2008 7:35 PM
Anonymous said...: No opt-out is unacceptable. We opted-in into watch instantly on our macs, but it now won't play on our PC because our processor doesn't support some SilverLight requirement. And it won't even work on our non-intel mac, which leaves just one desktop mac in our study where we can't really watch movies.

I would never have signed up if I thought for a minute that the option was going to be irreversible and not machine-specific.; November 18, 2008 8:29 PM
Anonymous said...: This is great. Thanks for listening to your users. I've been a loyal Netflixer since 2000 and appreciate your efforts to accommodate your longtime users. Bravo!; November 18, 2008 10:03 PM
DVS said...: Not sure why everybody thinks Silverlight is so great. It has a couple of nice features (such as forward and "rewind" preview), but overall it seems to be a step back in quality. The old player took a little bit longer to buffer, but the picture was crisp. With silverlight, the playback starts instantly, but the quality is bad. As the video goes on, the quality improves. It is almost as if the player was cheating by loading a part of the content first and then catching up with the rest of it. I thought the problem was with the computer, so I tried on a different one - same result. Then I thought it might be in the way Netflix is streaming the content - again, not the problem, because the Silverlight DEMO on the Microsoft web site has the same problems: it starts out crappy, and although it gets better after a few sec, it still cannot handle any motion, i.e. DO NOT LOOK AT THE WATER!!!

Bottomline for me - this product is not ready. Make it at least as good as the old one, or allow to switch back.; November 20, 2008 1:31 AM
Keep_It_Simple_Engineer said...: Where the current version failed to work at all, the beta works very well on Windows XP 64bit SP2 but when run on the same hardware with Vista Ultimate 64bit SP1 there is considerable tearing of the video display.

Hardware is Intel Quad 2.66MHz, 4GB DDR2 with dual nvidia 8800 GTX (drvr ver 175.16) in SLI on HP LP3065 using Firefox 3 and Silverlight version 2.

Perhaps Netflix should abandon MS code wherever possible before MS improves it to uselessness.; November 20, 2008 11:51 AM
coasterman20076 said...: I the netflix player is little to small even in fullscreen on IE and firefox browser I hop that fix this.; November 20, 2008 7:42 PM
Kemotaha said...: The player worked fine for me on Mac OSX 10.5.4 with firefox 3.0.1 but it didn't prevent the screen from dimming or the screen saver from coming on. I had to change my settings to get that to work.; November 20, 2008 10:30 PM
Anonymous said...: I just signed up for a trial, and if I can't get my issue resolved before the 2 weeks, I am canceling.

Tell me, what is the point of offering unlimited access to Instant movies, when none of them have audio and video synced correctly? None of the ones I have tried so far are any good.

I have high speed DSL and updated my video card driver just in case.

prid=845918198; November 21, 2008 8:39 PM
Anonymous said...: Couldn't watch "The Good Life" --- an old British sitcom. The video looks like an old TV picture whose vertical and horizontal hold need to be adjusted, the picture is split diagonally with the "right" part of the picture on the LEFT side of the screen.

I tried a recent movie and it worked just fine.

The Good Life episodes work perfectly fine on my Roku, by the way.

Looking forward to a fix.

P.S. Echoing many others --- lose the Microsoft technology please!; November 22, 2008 3:59 PM
Anonymous said...: Let me Opt Out ! PLEASE!
Jerky Video... Sync issues when video plays smoothly... a third of the stuff I watched is no longer available.; November 22, 2008 6:59 PM
Dan said...: My daughter reports that Hannah Montana: Season 2, episodes 27, 28, and 29 have no audio.; November 24, 2008 12:54 PM
Anonymous said...: VSYNC Tearing driving me crazy...; November 24, 2008 3:41 PM
Dan said...: Real Genius has a fairly severe voice sync issue on my Mac. I haven't tried it on Windows yet (no Windows machine handy), but I haven't noticed sync problems with other movies and it persists across restarts, so it may be an issue with the video/audio streams themselves. Just thought I'd pass it along. Also, you'd have to go out of your way to make it harder to file bugs for the Mac beta. Overall, though I haven't had a need to file bugs, so that's mostly ok.; November 24, 2008 6:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Interface and buffering is much better. It is much easier and faster to actually start the videos. The problem is choppy video playback for older computers. I have 2.0ghz amd athlon with 256mb nvidia 6600 with media center 2005. I have tried everything to try to fix the framerate, it just doesn't work. Movies are now totally un-watchable! MAKE IT WORK ON OLDER COMPUTERS!; November 24, 2008 9:15 PM
Anonymous said...: The major issue is TEARING. Whenever the camera pans horizontally its tearing the whole image! Please fix this. Running MacOS 10.5.5 on my MBP.; November 25, 2008 6:21 AM
Mike said...: You ought to move the sound button two pixels to the right so it lines up with the "Back to Browsing" button below it. Not a big deal, but would make the interface look cleaner.; November 26, 2008 6:27 AM
Anonymous said...: I have also noticed the audio lagging behind the video on both my mac and pc.; November 26, 2008 7:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Mac PowerPC?; November 26, 2008 11:27 AM
Marc said...: Just thought I'd say it almost works with Moonlight 1.9 on Firefox 3.0 on Linux. I built he Moonlight from the current svn trunk today and installed it. Netflix denies access based on the user agent string being reported though, so your user agent has to report itself as Windows. This is big. I having been waiting a long time to watch Netflix instant movies on Linux.; November 26, 2008 4:23 PM
Dan said...: Hey Marc -- if you Google around, I think there are a number of solutions for making Firefox spoof the User-Agent header. I suspect you'll still run afoul of the lack of video codec support in Moonlight, but here's hoping that'll get resolved in the not so distant future so I can watch from my Linux box as well!; November 26, 2008 6:01 PM
Max Boschert-Zielsdorf said...: Silverlight is awesome, I'm really enjoying finally being able to watch instantly on my Mac. One issue I can report is some weird sound stuff.

Several later episodes of 30 Rock, season one, have muffled, or even echo-ey sound. I can't seem to get these episodes to play with normal sound (as most of the season has had).

Also, on every episode of The Office that I've watched so far (from the beginning, most of the way through season two) have no music during the end credits, which I'm fairly sure is not how the DVD plays.

Finally, a question, is there any plan to bring more DVD content to silverlight? I'd love to be able to watch special features, and listen to audio commentaries of films and shows.

Thank you!; November 26, 2008 10:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Frequently my computer would lock up while watching a movie. In frustration I opted in and watched 4 episodes in a row. I'd say the beta is a success. 3x faster downloads, and fewer problems. I did notice an offset in audio vs video.; November 26, 2008 11:17 PM
robertjm said...: If my Powerbook G4 (PPC) has enough horsepower to run OSX Leopard there is no reason that I shouldn't be able to use the streaming player other than Netflix and Microsloth have decided to lock out people who don't use Intel-based hardware.

At this point, I'd hazard a guess that there are more PPC-based Macs out there than there are Intel-based ones and its going to be that way for quite some time to come.; November 27, 2008 11:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Most of the movies (video and audio) are not in sync. I want to OPT OUT!!!!!!!!

not workign well
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Broken_English/70059554?trkid=188469

and

http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Ira_Abby/70077513?trkid=188469

PLEASE FIX!!!!; November 27, 2008 12:20 PM
Anonymous said...: I was excited to try out the new player but it's turned into a real pain. during a 45 minute movie I had to refresh the page 6-7 times. I would get a message stating that my bandwidth has slowed and the player needed to reconfigure itself to avoid further interruptions. It goes through reloading and hangs, then it tells me it cannot reach a netflix server. A right click & refresh brings me back to my place in the movie. Do not want.

IE 7.0.6001.18000; November 27, 2008 3:32 PM
Anonymous said...: I called due to a drm error on my new desktop machine (intel e8400, ati 4850, dell wfp 3007 at 2560x1600). Talking to tech he suggested I try the silverlight client while he looked into my driver versions. It worked pretty well, I was impressed.

Tonight I sit with my laptop to watch a movie, I am forced to move to silverlight client. Hmm. Ok...

What do you know? Silverlight perf is terrible on my laptop. Laptop is pentium m 2ghz, geforce6800 ultra, screen is 1920x1200. Full screen glitches badly. I need to squeeze picture down to size of postcard to get movie to play smoothly. What have i done?

My wife's laptop is an acer ferrari 4000, it also glitches badly at full screen.

Problem is that silverlight is using software compositing, instead of the video card like the old player did. My 2Ghz pentium isn't fast enough to composite to my full screen.

I call tech to get myself removed from silverlight. He investigates and says there is NO WAY BACK. That if I quit and reopen my account i'll be set up with new player automatically.

He suggests I lower my screen resolution in order to watch full screen.

What kind of idiot would do scaling and color conversion in software when a gpu is sitting idle? Wake up netflix, you force everyone to use this new system, you are disabling live streaming for customers with older computers.

I understand cross compatibility with mac is good to have, and the new playready is easier to manage, but it, um... doesn't work?; November 27, 2008 9:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Me again. To finish my turkey-day rant after accidentally committing to the silverlight player and being unable to opt-out.

I just tried HULU.com. Free videos, not the greatest selection, but it can play 480p fine on my laptop at full screen. Quality is reasonable. What gives? The interface looks the same. Its FLASH based, instead of silverlight, and its somehow successful on my laptop. My guess is that flash is using the gpu to scale?

Netflix: How much is microsoft paying you to degrade your customer's experience?

I really, really like your service. I love your company, you seem to have a clear vision, you provide a good product for a good price. Before now the customer service has been EXCELLENT. I think you've made a bad bet. If you want to push through with this silverlight client you're going to need a way for customers to opt out of it if something goes wrong (like if their computer wasn't from 2008, or is one of those new ebooks or an intel atom...)

The numbers you should really care about is how many of us quit your service because of this.

I care so I'm voting with my feet. Adios.; November 27, 2008 10:45 PM
VictoryGrey said...: 10.4.11
macbook pro
safari 3.1.2
--------------
sliders season 1 episode 14
video is glitchy and audio doesn't match video
--------------
office season 4
video quality on all episodes shifted every few seconds from being in focus to blurry out of focus.; November 28, 2008 11:04 AM
Anonymous said...: I've had nothing but trouble with this. I've been able to play 1 out of 8 movies. Keeps telling me my internet speed has changed and has to rebuffer. hangs forever after that. I've tried on my Macbook pro with both Firefox and Safari. Hope they fix the bugs soon.; November 28, 2008 10:54 PM
Andy Radin said...: terrible audio/visual sync issues (mac pro 2008, 10.5.5, firefox 3.0.4). every few minutes there's a hiccup, and the previous scene replays with the audio continuing without interruption. sometimes it's almost continuous hiccups, other times it will go for a full 45 minute TV show with no problems. It was fine for me until a few days ago; no idea what changed. Highly frustrating.; November 29, 2008 12:29 AM
Josh said...: I am in the beta. I like the faster load time. I enjoy the frame references in time jumping. It is having real problems with maintaining audio/video sync. I have to time skip get it to resync it loses resync after a minute or so.; November 29, 2008 9:34 AM
Willmoore said...: Doctor Who- Robots of Death video is out of sync with audio from the beginning.

Doctor Who- The Pirate Planet is out of sync after about 1:15:00 in, it's unwatchable after that point.; November 29, 2008 11:13 PM
Willmoore said...: Oh, and I'm using a Mac, tried it in both FF and Safari. (re: my previous post.); November 29, 2008 11:15 PM
Anonymous said...: audio at least 5-10 seconds behind video in 'King Corn'. Worked OK with the last movie I watched 'Dog Day Afternoon". However, King Corn is unwatchable. Still get VSYNC tearing in video - that seems to be pretty universial across all movies - especially if the movie/video has a lot of fast movement. BTW never had a problem with the previous player and my connection always tests out at HIGH. Using Windows XP SP3, FF 3 - same results using my macbook with FF 3. I hope this is worked out soon as it gets rather frustrating especially since I cannot switch back to the old player which I would do immediately if allowed. Does the Roku have these issues or is it limited to the browser player (sliverlight)?; November 30, 2008 12:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Audio sync issues with LOTS of shows and movies. Sync isn't even close on King of Corn. Compression artifacts and errors across several videos. The Ken Burns Congress Documentary has still shots where the image wobbles around in the frame like crazy. Seriously, Microsoft, what is the problem? I know it's beta, but the errors are very common across videos. You honestly think you can charge people money for this crap? HULU and Adobe Flash Video OWN Netflix and Silverlight.; November 30, 2008 2:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Netflix, but selling out to Microsoft was a really really stupid move. HULU is gonna destroy you. The Flash player WORKS (unlike Silverlight), their streaming video and audio quality is the best of anyone currently, user interface is far superior, the ads based model is non-intruisive and will heavily dominate the subscription model, and finally, the Xbox 360 will never succeed as the new home entertainment center that most people use. Good luck, say hello to Blockbuster on your way down.; November 30, 2008 3:10 PM
CinemaslaveJoe said...: I own four Macs, all of which are PPC. Please don't forsake PPC Macs.; November 30, 2008 6:13 PM
Anonymous said...: When trying to play this movie:

http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70015622&trkid=226890

I'm getting this error:

Media Initialization Error
ErrorCode: 8052; November 30, 2008 7:11 PM
Barry said...: MacPro 8x3.2GHz / 10.5.5 / GeForce 880 / dual 23" Cinema displays

Watched my first steaming movie tonight (The Lives of Others) and it went well for the most part.

It appeared that it was dropping about 10-20% of the subtitles. It would just not display them for certain lines of the dialog.

There was some tearing on fast pans that really shouldn't happen on a system as over-speced as mine.

It would be nice if the full screen mode was able to dim the other displays on the system. I ended up opening up a large black window on the other display.; November 30, 2008 9:12 PM
Ruben DLR said...: There needs to be opt out. The player had been working great. I don't about other videos, but season 2 hereos episodes don't stream smoothly, lots of video repetion leading to out of sync audio.

Help, I want the old player back. I least then I can boot into Windows and watch.; November 30, 2008 9:24 PM
Josh said...: Working great on Safari except that the buffering stops when a new tab is active, but starts again when you go back to the Netflix tab. It does not happen when a new window is active, just a tab.; December 1, 2008 1:04 PM
steph said...: The first video I tried watching, Puccini for Beginners was about a minute lag time with the audio. Second video worked fine so far.

MacBook Pro 2.5 ghz intel core 2 duo with 4 gb memory.; December 1, 2008 6:40 PM
Warren Konkel said...: This player was working great... in the last few days, it's regressed. The audio is often a full second ahead of the video. The video sometimes jumps back and forth a few seconds (but still isn't synced to the audio). And when not in full screen mode (i.e. still in the browser window), the video player is substantially larger than my screen resolution (full screen actually shrinks it down to a manageable size).; December 1, 2008 10:35 PM
mariano said...: Netflix: Please give your customers a solution for the audio sync issue before we start suspending our accounts until it's fix (I'm about to do so) - Come on you guys... You have to do something about this now; December 1, 2008 10:39 PM
Anonymous said...: The Office Season 3 Episode "Grief Counseling" plays without sound.

Mac Safari & Firefox (current versions); December 2, 2008 1:08 PM
Anonymous said...: Please add an OPT OUT option. Video quality is not as good as it used to be with Flash.; December 2, 2008 9:05 PM
insidmal said...: it seems to change aspect ratio frequently on me, which is very distracting, and it tells me a lot that my connection setting has changed, especially when changing in and out of full screen, this I thought was supposed to be seamless but takes some time.. both these things have just about ruined instant viewing for me.. please add a way to get out of beta..; December 2, 2008 9:51 PM
Anonymous said...: I was trying to watch fingerprints and the audio was slow. Really want to watch that movie. HELP!; December 2, 2008 11:24 PM
Anonymous said...: The sound on Westworld and King Corn isn't synced to the picture.; December 3, 2008 10:03 AM
Anonymous said...: So when this first came out I could use on my work imac but not on my home MBP. It has now been working on both macs for a couple weeks. I was watching an episode of the Office without problem just two hours ago. When I came back to finish I got the 8103 157 sign in error again. Now nothing will play, I just get the sign in error. I have restared my browser several times. Cleared the cache etc.; December 3, 2008 1:52 PM
isaac32767 said...: Like Social Ghost, I was afraid to try the new player because I wanted access to the old player. Then my copy of Internet Explorer got all wonky just when I was ready to settle down and watch a movie. The new player works in Firefox, so I gave it a try. Beautiful. A few movies seemed to show in low resolution at first, but this has cleared up. It loads and buffers much faster than the old player. But what really wowed me was the stills that pop up when you seek to a random place in the movie. Not going back!!!; December 3, 2008 3:28 PM
Don said...: I am having lots of issues getting the video and sound to link. Thw worst so far has been Twilight Zone Season 1 (original series). It is off by about 30 seconds and is very annoying.; December 3, 2008 9:29 PM
Keep_It_Simple_Engineer said...: I'm trying the Silverlight system, and I am noticing tearing of the video on screen. Once IE7 dropped the connection and reported recalculating speed. The internet connection was great and killing then restarting IE7/Netflix restored the film. All in all it's better than the earlier system which didn't work at all.; December 4, 2008 9:30 AM
Anonymous said...: I was thrilled to see that the Mac is supported for instant viewing, but I was let down when I tried to watch "30 Rock" and got the following error several times:

"Your Internet connection has slowed..."

Then, I had to wait quite a while before it reached 100 percent and started playing again. This happened three times and then I gave up. I'm using Safari, so I'll try it on Firefox and Internet Explorer to see if that helps.

One suggestion: It would be great if you had an option where you could download the entire movie before it started playing. We Apple TV users are used to having to wait for a ridiculously long amount of time (try 8-10 hours for a rental movie!), so it wouldn't matter if it took a long time to load.

Also, it would be fantastic if we could download the Netflix movie to Apple TV and play it from there.

Thanks for thinking of we Mac users!; December 4, 2008 11:38 AM
Dane said...: Silverlight 2.0 is available on PowerPC G4 processors, so why won't the Netflix movie player work on this platform? Also, is there support in the works for Moonlight running on Linux? A MythTV box running Netflix would be fantanstic.; December 5, 2008 7:30 AM
Carrie said...: I just installed it, but it keeps saying that it won't recognize the plug-in, even though it installed perfectly.
I'm running on a brand-new MacBook, bought last June. I don't know what it's called, all I know is it's a MacBook, and I'm running Safari on it. And I'm getting the message that it can't find the plug-in so I can't try out Starlight. I really want to watch Instant movies. I don't know what to do so if anyone can help me???

My e-mail address is: sugarspellitout@gmail.com; December 5, 2008 12:11 PM
Carrie said...: Sorry to post again, but I restarted my MacBook (I have refrained from restarting because I'm downloading large files) and everytime I restart or shut down it takes that much longer for them to download.

Anyway, after I restarted, on a whim, it started working and installed properly and now I'm enjoying CSI Season 9, recently aired episodes on my Mac! YAY! Thanks so much for this, and I'll anticipate any bugs that have to be worked out, I understand it's a beta-version.; December 5, 2008 2:48 PM
Andrew said...: Linux plox. Cooperate with Novell to get Moonlight up to snuff or at least make your plugin sniffer aware of Moonlight.; December 5, 2008 6:43 PM
Anonymous said...: "Blame it on Fidel" - a French film - is having problems syncing the sound with the video. I'm using a mac, and firefox.; December 5, 2008 6:47 PM
Andrew Guzman said...: Just adding another to the stack of audio sync complaints. Trying to watch Season 8 of CSI and not a single episode has had proper audio/video sync.

On the other hand, we watched both seasons of 30 Rock and the picture quality was great and the audio was perfectly in sync...; December 5, 2008 8:40 PM
Tommy K said...: To add to what a lot of people have already said, the audio/video sync is way off on my mac. I was trying to watch King Corn (a documentary) and from the first minute the sync was out. Midway through, the video was about one or two minutes ahead of the audio. I've had problems with just about everything I've watched but King Corn was definitely the worst.; December 5, 2008 10:24 PM
paul said...: I have to say I am a little disappointed. When I herd the announcement that the instant watch feature would be available for Mac I assumed that meant all Mac's. I guess me and my G5 will have to sit this one out. Or, are there any plans to include us in the future?; December 6, 2008 4:15 PM
StageMan said...: Well, well, well looks like Microsoft screws us again...with Silverlight but this time we didn't get a choice as to who would be a "Beta Tester" and did Netflix offer us anything for involuntarily assisting them in the "testing"? NOOoooo ! They should have named it "SilverBlight" that's what I'm gonna call it. Ya see Mr & Mrs's or Ms. I was lied to, to get me over to Silverlight. Now at blog.netflix.com Mr Brent say in his post toward the bottom of the page under the heading "Opt-In for the new Netflix Movie Play"

Brent Says:
There may be bugs. We are logging all errors, but if you run into problems you can help out by posting details here in the blog comments.
Not all movies are available to watch with Silverlight. You may notice errors or lower than normal quality when watching certain titles.

So Reed thanks for screwing me by taking my money but not allowing me to see movies anybody not coerced to installing SilverBlight can watch. SilverBlight sucks and was as is usual for Microsoft Products like Vista...released to early. That's why there are suits over Vista. It's screwed peoples lives a property up.
I just tried to unwind in my office after working 14 straight hours by watching "Going South" . It's a comedy but wouldn't ya know SilverBlight isn't streaming it correctly ! The audio is out of sync ! but not with Windows media Player.
SilverBlight sucks but why would Netflix use it? Could it be that The Founder and CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings sits on the Board of Microsoft and maybe the Microsoft Board had a pow wow about how they could do the broadest base test. I can hear them now...hey Reed let's use the Netflix customers to test SilverBlight ! and other board members that have an interest in other streaming movie rental online companies whispering to each other..."yeah,yeah the Netflix customers would be good Guinea Pigs to test their crap on Hmmm and maybe he'll lose a lot of customers in the process and our online streaming video rental company can pickup the collateral damage customers".

People Reeds got us as basically a captive audience and when you change over to SilverBlight and for some nonsensical reason he's given the orders not to let us change back to Windows Media Player. Hey Reed have you ever heard the word boycott? It's still practiced and it being practiced more and more as corporations act more meniacal.
Silverlight ! Hmmm could it be that Microsoft's ego maniacs want to try and go after Adobe/Macromedia Flash which dominates the streaming video genre?
Talking of streaming. Has anybody noticed that Microsoft itself doesn't use it's own SilverBlight on any of it's sites. It uses the tried and true Windows Media Player that took 15 years to develop it to this point that it's a rock solid and consistanly stable App and it works on Mac's as well. Hmmm...intersting! I'm sure the Microsoft employees knows SiverBlight sucks.
I'm now seriously thinking about dumping my Netflix account if the streaming is going to be as bad as it has been and switch to the competition.
I made a prediction to one of the Netflix Techs when I called in to complain. I predict that because SilverBlight isn't backward compatible to a lot of hardware that is still in use that Netflix over the next year will lose 7% to 12% of it's customer base and I think I'm being on the conservative side.; December 6, 2008 8:00 PM
AndyPants said...: SilverLight is crap. Using a PC here and the video is way out of sync with the audio. I can stand random bugs and such but an ongoing issue like this (judging by the comments) that basically disables your instant viewing availability is unacceptable. PLEASE LET US OPT-OUT!!!!!! That or I'm going Blockbuster.; December 6, 2008 9:23 PM
Andy said...: add me to the list of disappointed netflix customers with a Mac ppc computer that is still not going to be supported by the new player.

weren't ppc computers being sold new like 2 years ago? can anyone explain what the ppc issue is? it's not like there's a restriction between Intel and AMD processors on the PC end of things other than speed. why the problem with ppcs that can still run the latest Mac OS and meet the other requirements?

not sure what can/will be done about it by netflix, but I'm still expecting to use this computer for several more years. which is more than I can say for how long I'll be a netflix customer.

but I'm confident life will go on for both me and netflix if we part ways. :-); December 6, 2008 11:21 PM
John said...: No crashes. Loads fast. No problems pausing or skipping ahead or back. Problem is video is rather jerky possibly due to frame drops making most titles unwatchable. It's as if the player has turrets syndrome. Drives me crazy. Hope this can be fixed. Your close but sorry no cigar for you. I'm using
Mac Mini Intel dual core 1.83 GHz
2 GB SDRAM
OS X 10.4.11
1600 x 900 LCD
Firefox 3.0.4
DSL 2.5 Mbps download; December 7, 2008 12:04 AM
Eric Silva said...: I just clicked "Play" on my Mac and a movie started playing via Silverlight.

The thing is... I didn't opt in. The opt-in page now states that I've opted in!

What the heck? Should simply clicking play do that??; December 7, 2008 5:55 PM
Mike said...: For Netflix Movie Viewer + Silverlight audio/video sync issues in OS X: as soon as a movie loads and can be paused, pause it. Let some of the show/movie load before pressing play.; December 8, 2008 11:07 PM
Anonymous said...: HD streaming to PS3 please.; December 9, 2008 6:29 AM
Anonymous said...: Another disappointed PowerPC Mac user here! As someone else said, it's really disappointing to pay the same price as others but get only partial services. My computer and wide band set up meets all the requirements except the processor is not Intel. I should get a discount.; December 9, 2008 6:37 AM

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Friday, October 31, 2008

Opt-in for the new Netflix movie player

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