DAVID POGUE reviews the new Netflix Player, a $100 black box that already delivers 10,000 movies and recent TV episodes to you on demand. It’s pay per view. Commercial free.
This thing could not be simpler. I was watching my first movie six minutes after opening the box.
Like all Internet movie services, the Netflix Player requires a high-speed Internet connection. It found and connected to my wireless network instantly and flawlessly. (You can connect it to your home network with a cable if you prefer.)
It connects to your TV using any kind of modern video connection: HDMI cable, component cables, S-Video or even those old red-white-yellow RCA cables. The nine-button remote lets you choose a movie, skip around in it or pause.
Is the Netflix Player, then, the movie box the world is waiting for? Not quite. It falls short on the age of its movies, the smallish selection of good ones and the not-quite-pristine video quality. And as with all Internet movies, you don’t get subtitles, director commentaries or any other DVD extras.
But it comes darned close. For movie lovers who already subscribe to Netflix, at least, this one-time $100 expenditure is practically a no-brainer.
NY Times – State of the Art –
20 Seconds, and a Movie Has Arrived
Of course this is only available in the USA, so far. But it’s coming soon everywhere.
The future looks bright. Right?
Yet more people than ever are paying more than ever before for “traditional” cable TV. Competitors have not gained much traction yet. New technologies are still seen as novelties, not replacements.
Cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996, roughly double the rate of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month.
Cable Prices Keep Rising, and Customers Keep Paying – NY Times
In the REAL world, my parents are getting their first DVR soon.
Rick McCharles 
What I find most annoying about traditional TV is the fact that it’s so full of commercials. I understand the concept of commercials that pay for the programming, but the concept of me paying for programming that’s already been paid for by the advertisers is what really irks me. I understand that the cable companies have nothing to do with the TV stations that they carry other than the symbiotic relationship of having them on their feeds, but it still annoys me.
In a perfect world we should be able to watch programming with commercials for free, or choose to pay for commercial-free programming. In our far from perfect world I can not even subscribe to the individual channels that I am interested in, rather I am “forced” to subscribe to a package that includes my channel(s), and the digital box that sits on my TV feeds back information about my watching habits so that the cable company can split up similar channels next time around between more tiers so that they can charge me even more.
How nice is that?