Posted in RC's Rants at June 13th, 2008 by RC
| 3 Comments » | 
Netflix is a pretty cool service. I can watch all these TV shows and movies that I missed the first time around. When they added the ability of unlimited video streaming my first thought was “Hot Dog!” However, once I did some research I found out the streaming video is not the bees knees after all. First of all there is no Mac support, which they blame Apple for, pure laziness. Second, you can only watch movies through Internet Explorer. Yuck! That’s like saying “here is a free Porsche but you can only drive it with your elbows and keep it under 25 mph.” Also, their “watch instantly” section is not very big. Out of the hundred movies and TV shows in my queue a dozen are available for streaming. Lastly, the video quality itself it pretty poor. It’s like better than YouTube and worse than every other video format that exists.
Despite all these reasons I would still like to watch some videos online rather than waiting for a disc to come in the mail. But how do I get these videos magically to my TV? There have been rumors of Netflix adding XBOX 360 support which would be the greatest thing ever. Until then I have to find some way to hook a PC (not a Mac remember) to my TV. There are only two working PCs in my house. One is in my arcade cabinet and is so old it was invented by Eli Whitney, also it is the more important role of powering Donkey Kong. The other is my Dell laptop that is a few years old. It doesn’t have DVI out, only S-Video (the S stands for “sucky” apparently). I plugged it in and even though the cords introduce a tripping hazard, it is a capable solution. By capable I mean if a apocalypse struck and the only form of entertainment left on earth was video through laptop and S-Video, I wouldn’t complain. So what are my options? I could buy a PC with DVI out just to be used as a media center or I can wait and hope Netflix does a 360 hookup.
The Hardest Thing In My Life is streaming Netflix videos.