Netflix for the Nintendo Wii Has Arrived: How to Save Money and Watch Unlimited Movies

Bruce Springsteen's song was prophetic. Now it seems we have hundreds of channels and nothin' on. As a movie buff, I embraced cable TV movie channels with relish and zeal. After the honeymoon period, reality set in. Sure, there were lots of movies, but only so many that interested me, and of those, only so many new movies each month. One can waste a lot of time watching the same movies repeatedly in a cable TV induced trance. That's not what I had in mind.

Enter Netflix

Netflix allows me to select movies I want to see, learns the kind of movies I like based on how I rate movies in their catalog, and sends me DVDs with lightening speed. I put a DVD in the mail on Monday and I get the next DVD from my queue (list of DVDs I've selected for viewing) on Wednesday.

Unlike cable, I can see new releases much sooner since they are available on DVD first. Netflix also carries titles on Blu-ray. Not that you would want to, but you can cancel Netflix anytime and even suspend your account if you go on vacation.

More Movies and TV Shows for Less Money

Netflix's $8.99 per month option offers the best of both worlds. You can have unlimited streaming to your PC, Mac, or TV as well as home delivery of new releases - as many as you want, one DVD at a time. By eliminating premium channels from my cable service, I saved $40 per month. Adding Netflix for $10 a month still leaves me $30 ahead and in terms of movies options I'm way ahead with my choice of over 100,000 DVD titles and 17,000 titles available for instant streaming - nirvana!

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings formed Netflix in 1997 with an ambitious vision: to "one day deliver the entire recorded output of Hollywood, instantly and in high definition, to any screen, anywhere." A forward thinker, Hastings "called the company Netflix and not, say, DVDs by Mail." Hastings has a touching way of explaining what he wants to achieve with Netflix. "'When people connect with a movie, it really makes them happy, and that's fundamentally what we're trying to do," he says."

You may ask, "But what about my premium channel shows?" Not to worry. You can catch premium channel fare like Weeds, The Tudors, Dexter, and Entourage, as well as other favorites - Heroes, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, House, 30 Rock, and many other TV series.

Netflix and Wii

To watch movies and TV through your Wii, insert the Wii disk and access it as you would any Wii game. Browse the Netflix streaming library by category (drama, comedy, documentary) and select a show to watch instantly or add it to your instant queue to watch later. You can also log on to your Netflix account from your computer to find movies and TV shows. One day I watched a classic Saturday Night Live episode and then caught Sandra Bullock's The Proposal, while adding Bullock's The Blind Side to my DVD queue so it would ship to me as soon as the DVD was released. Life is good!

Don't have a Wii? Netflix also streams via the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Sources:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-10/ff_netflix
http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks