Neflix movie streaming!
It had to happen sooner than later. Netflix has come out with a new service which let's users watch movie over the Internet. The way it works is, you need to install a software on your machine and then on Netflix site you will have two buttons play (for playing online) or add (for renting the DVD). Once you hit play the movie will start streaming down the Internet to your PC. The service does not let you download the movie, but is free for subscribers for a limited number of hours. From what I have read, those with $18.00 per month service will get 18 hours of free movie time. Also you only get timed for the number of minutes you watched the movie. So if you started watching a movie and found it crapy, you can stop it and get charged only for the number of minutes you were into the movie. The service is in the initial stages and I suspect it will be atleast a few years before this whole Internet Movies (if I were Apple I would have called it iMovies) gets mass acceptance, but until then I guess Neflix is just testing the waters.
Note: Verisign showed a demo of a similar service at CES 2007. The service lets you download HD quality content over the Internet. It uses a P2P backbone to speed up the content delivery.