Microsoft, Netflix and some very good news for couch potatoes |
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Microsoft, Netflix and some very good news for couch potatoes
Yeah, sure, Microsoft impressed people with its "Project Natal" motion-sensing technology for video games this week. And the company's new Bing search engine got lots of attention, lighting up the Space Needle and everything. But the company's best news of the week, without question, was a change in the way it will deliver Netflix on-demand movies over its Xbox 360 game console.
The ability to stream Netflix movies is one of the most popular features of Microsoft's Xbox Live online service. However, as it's currently set up, the system prevents users from updating their on-demand Netflix queues from the Xbox 360 itself.
It's not exactly the promise of the digital age fulfilled. But starting in a couple months, it will change.
At the E3 video-game convention earlier this week, Microsoft said it would update the technology in August to allow people to add titles to their Netflix instant queues from the console. It may have gotten overlooked it in the crush of news this week, but it's worthy of note.
It's not the biggest advance in history of technology, but in terms of practical impact, it's a big improvement. In my case, for example, the current situation means I need to get up and go to to a completely different part of the house, wake up my computer, browse to the Netflix site, find what I want to watch, add it to my queue, then go back to the living room and select it on my console.
Suffice it to say I'm eagerly awaiting that August update.
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