Watch Netflix movies on Apple TV
My wife recently purchased an Apple TV for me as a birthday present. I was very excited as I’ve wanted one since they released the 2.0 update which no longer required that you have a computer connected to it in order to watch/buy/rent movies from iTunes.
Since then I’ve converted my entire DVD collection to my computer for instant access on the Apple TV, purchased more than a few movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store and have spent far more time than I expected browsing YouTube videos. But there’s something missing…
I’ve been a Netflix user for several years now. A year or so ago they announced the ability to watch many of their library videos directly on their website instantly, which was huge. The cost of the membership seemed instantly more worthwhile. The only downside is it’s windows only (due to DRM issues) and while I don’t mind setting up a Windows partition on my Mac Pro I’d prefer to not have to reboot my computer to take advantage of this great feature. So this got me thinking, will we ever see the ability to watch Netflix movies directly from the Apple TV?
The Roku set-top box (and soon the XBox 360, if you have an XBox LIVE Gold membership) offers this ability right now, but that’s the ONLY ability it has. No online store for buying movies, no access to movies on your computer, nothing. I would love to have the ability to browse and play the titles Netflix has available for online streaming directly from my Apple TV. This would not only bring incredible value to my Netflix membership but (I think) would also dramatically increase the appeal of the Apple TV.
Netflix has announced that their online streaming service will be available to Mac users before the end of the year; could this mean the ability to watch Netflix movies on the Apple TV isn’t far behind? Oh please let it be so!
