Hands On: PS3 Netflix Instant Streaming

By Joe Haygood | November 6, 2009

Well, after seeing their Xbox 360 breathern enjoy the fruits of Netflix Instant Streaming, PS3 owners are starting to see the joys of watching Netflix via their own consoles.  Everything you have seen on the Xbox 360 service is available here, albeit in a very plain interface, but Netflix works as advertised, and very quickly.  Hit the jump for a quick look at the new service along with its all of its ups and downs.  We also have screen captures of the complete interface, with the exception of adding a movie to your queue.

The first thing you need to realize is that Netflix does not happen as easy as it does on the Xbox 360.  You need a physical disc in order to use the interface.  If you have not gone about requesting an Instant Streaming disc from Netflix, you are up the creek without a paddle if you wanted to use the service tonight.  Discs do ship out fairly quickly, and if you live in the Los Angeles basin area, you will get a disc next day after requesting one.  Even after you get your disc, there is a verification process, and linking your account to the console.  For those that already have Xbox 360 streaming enabled, you will have to link your account to your PS3, but it will not affect the link to your 360 in any way.  You can stream to both devices without any issue, just not at the same time.

Selecting the Netflix icon under the Video section of the X-Media bar will get you to the abovementioned verification process, and once you have finished, you will be presented with your queue.  Verification by the way, happened rather quickly, in under 45 seconds for me.  Netflix does say it could take up to three minutes, so times may vary.  Also, I have a feeling the process might take longer this evening as a lot of people get on the site to setup their accounts.

The interface is very plain, with your queue sitting on a very plain white background.  The moves are stacked in a row horizontally, and you just use the left stick or d-pad to move either left or right through the queue.  Moving around the queue is quick and responsive, and the box art showed up rather quickly, an issue I have right now with the Xbox 360 version of Netflix.  You cannot hold down a direction to auto-scroll through the queue.  The queue will only move one position to the right or left, regardless of holding it down, requiring more use of the controller or remote to navigate the queue.  Pressing up on the queue takes you to the selection screen, where you can move between your queue, recently watched movies, and then each queue by category, each holding 100 movies.  You can add movies it looks like, through the queue, but I did not see anything I wanted to be associated with me in the movie selections.

One you select the movie, it loads up rather quickly.  Maybe a hair faster than the 360 version of the interface.  However, it seems like skipping around in the movie takes far longer to buffer and start playback again.  On the 360 side of the fence, you can jump around quite a bit before you see any heavy loading by Netlfix.

The Netflix service is far more functional than I expected, with most of the features being present and accounted for at the time of launch.  There is no party watching service, as is to be expected, since that feature part of the Xbox Live Dashboard.  it is also very drab and dull, leading to a bored experience while going through the queues.  These things can be looked past right now, but the bigger issue is that the whole application just seems twice removed from the X-Media bar.  The lack of any real integration shows, and it really brings the product down a notch.  Again, this is something that will be fixed according to Netflix and Sony in the future, but it just seems like they rushed this to get it out before Christmas, instead of releasing a final product.

As it stands, Netflix Instant Streaming on the Playstation 3 is an enjoyable, although drap experience.  One would want more, but the pure functionality of the application is enough on its own merits.  And just knowing I have 12,000+ movies at my fingertips, instead of having to pay ridiculously inflated prices on the marketplace makes this an instant win product.  Netflix Instant Streaming easily gets a 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts from me.  Fixing up the little nagging issues and controls will get Sony and Netflix the 5 Aeropausonaut rating that  it really deserves.