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Zumpano, thanks for going to that effort. I'm going to leave the list in my first post to just the newly available instant movies, so it's more manageable. But your list is still worthwhile in case anyone sees something there they didn't already know was available. Thanks again!

Looks like Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" just became available.

Netflix adding Starz owned films and TV shows from CBS and Disney to their streaming content.

Interesting that all of those recently discontinued Instant Viewing titles date of demise coincided with this explosion of Starz material. I was told by one of their phone reps that many of those titles were dropped because of "expiring rights". Hmmm.....yeah, I'll bet Image Ent. was driving a really hard bargain to allow NF to continue offering silent films they owned!

Oh well, it's not like I didn't own 90% of those titles already, but it kind of reminds me of Dish Network's excuse for scuttling the Voom Network channels recently. Those channels had problems, to be sure, but they claimed there wasn't viewer demand for them, and that's why they were being dropped. Well, that's a convenient excuse if you need room for new HD channels from mainstream providers who are obviously going to generate more cash from subscribers, but don't tell ME I'd rather pay for stretch-o-vision HD versions of 4:3 channels over MonstersHD, etc.!

Some things that I've seen become recently available - some may have been noted before, forgive me if they have: Le Bonheur and La Pointe Courte, in the last few days. This inspires confidence that they're also carrying remastered Vagabonds and Cleos as well, if there was doubt before. Also the Dreyer box (Ordet, etc) finally turned up. And the '35 David Copperfield has inexplicably been in a "save" status for quite some time but is now showing up available on October 7.

Irritatingly, both the Lupino Road House and now Man of the West have popped up as available for Instant Viewing but remain MIA for DVD rental.

I'm curious if anyone has tried to watch any of the numerous new "Starz Play" titles, and has had the same experience that I have had, that is, the quality is no where NEAR as good as the regular Instant Viewing titles! I've sampled about a half a dozen or so, and they're simply not good enough to warrant watching at all, worse than VHS, more akin to Youtube quality. It seems like a whole lot of bother for no purpose, and will turn people off to the whole enterprise, seeing that many of these titles are more mainstream than previous offerings. I HAD been pleasantly surprise by the quality, up until now, which seemed atypical of streaming video, in general.

I could list a number of these, but "Farewell, My Lovely" (1975) will suffice as an example. Seeing that this title is not available for dvd rental, is OOP in its region 1 release, it's especially a shame.

Monte Hellman's Ride in the Whirlwind is available.

MyNameCriterionForum wrote:Monte Hellman's Ride in the Whirlwind is available.

And, as part of the "Starz Play" collection, this is unfortunately more evidence that this huge collection is full of smeary, low-resolution transfers. I DID sample this, and it's simply unwatchable. Nobody should try and form an impression of any film from this kind of stuff. If the trend is to go for THIS, and stop renting dvds of certain titles once they are available in poor instant viewing copies, Netflix and I may be parting company. I'd like an explanation from whatever bean counters decided that this Starz crap should fly!

I haven't checked this out yet, but I know that Netflix has three levels of quality based on the speed of your internet connection. Are you sure it's detecting your connection as high before it loads up the file?

Worst case scenario, at least these titles say they're presented by Starz, so if they're all bad, at least you can identify them as such without having to play each one to find out.

I do wish Netflix would allow you to choose a speed, and let us be willing to wait while a movie loads if you want higher resolution. I have a very high speed sytem but they always, invariably, assign me the low speed picture. Pisses me off.

I've read there's a hack perhaps to adjust quality?

swo17 wrote:I haven't checked this out yet, but I know that Netflix has three levels of quality based on the speed of your internet connection. Are you sure it's detecting your connection as high before it loads up the file?

Worst case scenario, at least these titles say they're presented by Starz, so if they're all bad, at least you can identify them as such without having to play each one to find out.

I thought about that, so I checked some titles that previously had looked sharp (because even among the titles that aren't part of the Starz package there has been some variation), and it confirmed to me that those other titles looked MUCH sharper. I'll continue to evaluate this, but I'd love to know if anyone finds a particular "Starz" title that looks good.

Well, four days from release and I still don't see Malick's extended New World cut on the Netflix site... I have requested it, I hope others will as well.

I really hate how Netflix is sticking it to all MAC users who for some reason cannot use the instant viewing system. How hard could it possible be to adapt to both formats?

Macintosh wrote:I really hate how Netflix is sticking it to all MAC users who for some reason cannot use the instant viewing system. How hard could it possible be to adapt to both formats?

I think the problem is they can't work out the DRM for whatever would end up being the media player of choice on Macs. They're terrified that someone will, therefore be able to make an unauthorized copy of a blurry-vision Starz Play title by hooking up the Mac video outs to a DVDR recorder.

I'm wondering if they're REALLY trying to work this problem out, or if they're content to keeping spinning the same story/excuse, because I don't think Apple really wants to change a program like Quicktime to suit Netflix. You would think they could work with WMP for Mac, but they stopped updates after WMP 9, and even on Windows you need the newest version. There's Flip4Mac, but I don't know what the hang up is there.

You will soon be able to stream Netflix films from your Samsung BR player.

The Tall T is available to watch instantly... though with the upcoming box set, it's kind of pointless.

There's a fairly large amount of Herzog's work available:

Aguirre
Fitzcarraldo
Even Dwarfs Started Small
Land of Silence and Darkness
The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck?
La Soufriere
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Woyzeck
Stroszek
Cobra Verde
Lessons of Darkness
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
My Best Friend: Klaus Kinski

Good news for Mac users--apparently, you will soon be able to use Netflix's Instant Viewing program on a Mac. Here's all the technical mumbo jumbo.

Netflix HD streaming coming soon to your XBox.

Interesting news, but if they shut out those with home computers, that would be complete BS....I'm not buying any stupid console....personally I think they should team up with Oppo, offer it exclusively for their upcoming BluRay player, and give the players to all subscribers! =D>

Netflix coming to Tivo too.

I think NetFlix is running out of movies to recommend to me

I mentioned it on another page, but Mac users can now opt in to the new player, although they warn it may still be buggy.

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/10/opt-in- ... layer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had all those silents queued, and by the time they put Instant Viewing on the Mac, they replaced it with stuff I didn't want to see. I'd already seen most of them, but didn't own them and wanted to go for an additional viewing. Oh well, now I can watch Starz's sub-quality videos of movies I saw in the theater last year—cropped to 16x9!

HD-DVD officially disappears from NetFlix on December 15th.

The NYTimes does a piece on the contest to improve Cinematch.