Instead of wasting your time going through the hassle of hacking up the iPad version of the Netflix app to work on the iPhone/iPod Touch you can now just head over to the 
and download the app yourself. Netflix has officially released the Netflix app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This will allow you to stream TV Shows and Movies over both Wifi and 3G! It obviously requires a Netflix account, but it doesn't cost any extra money to stream to your iOS device.
By now I'm sure most of you know that there is a pretty sweet Netflix app out for the iPad, but currently there is no option for the iPhone. Sure, the official app is supposed to come out at the "end of the summer" (or something like that) according to Netflix, but I'm impatient and couldn't wait. So if you're like me and you can't wait and you've got a jailbroken iPhone, here's what you can do to get in on the fun a bit early, and yes you still need a Netflix account for this to work.
*Note: If you haven't jailbroken your phone, simply open safari (on the phone of course) and go to www.jailbreakme.com, then slide to jailbreak... that's it.
I can't take credit for these instructions as they have been posted a million places by now, but I figured one more place can't hurt. Plus I did it all last night it about 10 minutes and it works great.
It's not the most glamorous method, but it works and despite there being 14 steps they are pretty simple and I tried to make them as easy to understand as I could. I know I ran into some vague instructions last night when doing it myself so I wanted to make sure other people weren't having the same issues. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to help if I can.
Update: For those of you that are curious as to how much data this is going to eat up I just ran a test and it looks like 5 minutes of streaming equates to about 17 megs. I believe this is one of the movies that is in HD as well, so it may be slightly less for a normal SD movie, but this should give you a rough idea of how much data you're looking at. So for a 90 minute movie you're looking at roughly 300 megs, so watch your data usage if you plan on using this over 3G without an unlimited plan.
Update (8/26/10): The Netflix App has been officially released in the App Store for iPhone/iPod Touch! Read More Here
So naturally when Netflix announced that they were going to be bringing their streaming video service to the Playstation 3 I was intrigued. I already own an Xbox 360 and an Insignia Blu-Ray player, both of which I use to stream Netflix movies to my TV's, but there's no harm in having 3 Netflix enabled devices. The difference between the Xbox 360's ability to stream and the Playstation 3's ability to stream is that Microsoft and Netflix have some sort of exclusive agreement that allows for the 360 to be the only console to natively support Netflix streaming from the dashboard. In other words the Xbox 360 has the software to stream Netflx built into the system software where as the PS3 requires a disc in order to be able to stream.
When they first announced the PS3 streaming you needed to request a disc from Netflix, nobody was really sure how long it would be after the request that you would actually see the disc, but I'm happy to say that it only took a week or so to receive my disc. Obviously Netflix does not want you to send this disc back as they require with normal movie rentals and there are ample warnings on the sleeve to let you know that you can keep the disc, it doesn't even come with a return envelope so it should be pretty obvious, but I figured I'd throw that in there just in case those of you that were still waiting for your disc were curious.
When you first insert the disc into the system you'll have to link it to your Netflix account via the activation processes. Basically you'll have to go to a website and input an activation code in order for the PS3 to recognize your Netflix account. After you get through the activation process, which takes only a few minutes, you will be presented with your instant queue. The instant queue are the movies that you've added on the Netflix website, but this isn't your only option for finding movies to watch. Besides the instant queue you can also browse by things like new streaming arrivals, different genres of movies as well as different TV shows, the only thing you can't do is search by title so you'll be browsing through a lot of movies if you have a specific one in mind, but if that's the case you're better off just jumping on the website and adding it to your instant queue.
The quality of the movies isn't terrible, not every movie is in HD so don't expect HD quality from every title, and the quality also depends on your internet connection. I haven't had any problems with the quality of streaming whether it's on the PS3, Xbox 360 or my Insignia Blu-Ray player, but friends of mine that live in downtown Chicago have complained that they quality of their streaming was absolutely terrible, unwatchable. So just make sure your connection is decent if you plan on streaming these movies. My only other complaint is the software itself is pretty simple. I understand that the use of a disc is necessary to get around the exclusivity that Microsoft has with Netflix for the time being, but I can only hope that once the software is integrated into the PS3 dashboard, that it is a little more seamless. The software on the PS3 disc is actually the exact same software that is on my Insignia Blu-Ray player which I was not too impressed with when I got it. I know the functionality between this software and the built in software on the 360 is almost the same, but the navigation and execution on the 360 just seems much smoother and faster. So if I had to choose which hardware to use to stream Netflix I would still have to choose the Xbox 360, but only for now, we'll see what happens when Sony can build it into the software natively. The other downfall of the service is the movie selection, it's gotten better since earlier this year, but it's still not the greatest.
Have you guys tried this out yet? What do you think?
Here are the DVD and Blu-Ray releases for Tuesday November 3rd, 2009. Notable releases for today are the John Travolta remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 and the over-the-top ridiculous action movie G.I. Joe. I think I'll be waiting for both of these on netflix, but what are you guys picking up this week?
DVD Releases
I know you've all read stories about the elusive xbox 360 red ring of death aka RRoD, but it was just announced this past week that apparently the Xbox 360 has a failure rate of about 54%, which is absolutely unacceptable. If the iPhone had a failure rate that high there's no way that Apple would get away with it or let alone not want to immediately fix the problem, but that's apparently not how Microsoft wanted to deal with their problem. Instead of correcting the design fault (which I can only assume is what's causing this issue) they just beef up their warranty to 3 years and fix/send you a refurbished one instead. I don't know, personally I would rather buy a brand new system that had this problem fixed from the factory than have to send my broken one off to Microsoft for 3 weeks while they fix it (probably not the right way) or send me a refurbished one that was someone else's broken machine. This whole problem is absolutely ridiculous and despite Microsoft claiming that they've fixed the problem in the newer systems there are still people getting the RRoD on those consoles, none of them are safe... Now, including mine.
This isn't the first Xbox 360 that I've been through so I am familiar with the RRoD and it's pain. I bought a launch system the January after it came out, on ebay since they were impossible to find in the stores, and the thing worked great for a long time. Now, I'm not going to lie, I've modded pretty much every console system that I've owned in order to save a little money, but I figured that because of that I wasn't going to flash the firmware on my 360 and actually buy the games for once, plus it was kind of a pain in the ass to do the mod and I didn't feel like dealing with it. So I amassed quite a collection of games over the first couple of years and realized that a lot of the games I was buying I was beating and never playing again and it just seemed like a waste of money. Now I know what you're thinking, why didn't I just trade them in to GameStop or sell them on eBay or something. The thought had crossed my mind, but I always had this feeling like as soon as I sold one of the games I'd get this itch to play it or they'd release some sick DLC that I'd miss out on, so I kept every game.
