Well, it looks like my thoughts about Netflix just been improved (had some hard feelings with slow shipments and losing a week worth of service a while back: http://reflectedthought.com/RandomThoughts/archive/2008/08/18/Netflix-I-am-not-so-happy-anymore.aspx ).

Netflix has made a deal with Starz! for 2,500 movies to be listed under their “Watch Instantly” streaming video on demand system.  While Netflix had 12,000 titles listed in the “Watch Instantly” section, much of them were older shows or really, really lame shows.  With this deal, Netflix has 1,000 of these new titles available now and the other 1,500 are supposed to be added soon.  Also, was mentioned watching Starz! through live streaming at no extra cost (not available yet, but supposed to be soon).

After a quick browse of new releases in the “Watch Instantly” section and it is obvious the Starz! titles have arrived.  There are quite a number of main stream titles.  There should be plenty to watch when you have the time.  Also, they have TV Series available.  Miss an episode of CSI last year?  They seem to have all CSI (prior to this year) available for instant view.

For our house, we have an old DEL laptop with S-Video output which we use in the living room to watch Netflix “Watch Instantly” titles.  There have been a few quirks with bandwidth using wireless, but that issue will be solved shortly as I ordered some Cat 5 cable and will be hard wiring the LAN into the living room which should give us plenty of bandwidth. 

Cost is not bad, a good older laptop, $80 on eBay, Cat 5 cable $13, audio patch cord $5.  If you are not interested in having a usable computer pumping out the video, you can purchase either the Roku standalone Netflix viewer for $99 or the LG Network Blu-ray Dsic Player for $399. 

For those that are not aware, you can get a membership to Netflix with unlimited “Watch Instantly” and have 1 DVD shipped out at a time on top of it for only $8.99 per month!