Netflix Watch Instantly, Sort Of

posted by Jett Loe

Ok, so I’m all excited that the Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ feature is now available on Macs thank to Microsoft’s Silverlight, (gotta have that DRM right – my favorite part of any movie viewing experience is waiting on the text that says ‘Buffering – Determining Content Permissions).

Anyhew, so 2001 is available to watch instantly.  Whoo boy!  Sure it was envisioned for Super Panavision 70, (an IMax of the 60′s), and so the impact of the film would be lost viewed as it were on my computer screen, but at least I could admire Stan the Man Kubrick’s compositions, right?

Well no.  ‘Cause unless Netflix, as part of some bizarre public education program, is letting the ‘kids of today’ know what it was like in the pre-DVD era – the Watch Instantly 2001 is formatted to 4×3.  As seen in the screen grab above.

Oh, Netflix.  You get so much right.  Yet so much wrong.

Guess I’ll just have to watch Alan Cummings on standing up to Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 4:24 pm. It is filed under Blog, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.