Hacking NetFlixNetflix News & Info. New Releases Every Monday.Have Roku's Netflix Player How Do You Like It- June 24, 2008 Did you get your Netflix Player from Roku How do you like it I've been happy with the quality and speed, and there are a surprising number of movies I haven't seen (but it would be nice to see more new or recent releases). I have had two minor issues so far: a HDMI bug that seems to have been fixed, and a few missing DVD covers: Greg reports that he "ordered my Roku yesterday morning and it shipped that afternoon." The Roku site says 8-12 weeks for standard shipping: Roku is charging $9.99 for..http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/319088166/have-rokus-netf.html Netflix Notifying Iowa Customers about Possible Delay Due to Floods- June 24, 2008 Netflix is notifying customers in Iowa that might be affected by the flood that DVDs might be delayed. WJMP posted the following notice from Netflix on Flickr: If you're in the Iowa flood area, contact Netflix at 888-638-3549 if you have questions or want to put your account on hold.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/319079567/netflix-notifyi.html Apple Renting or Selling 50,000 Titles Per Day- June 24, 2008 Variety reports that Apple is selling or renting 50,000 titles per day, and is on track to move 18 million titles a year. For comparison, Netflix ships more than 1.9 million DVDs per day. via Cinematech.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/319070180/apple-renting-o.html How Would You Rate Netflix New Release Availability- June 24, 2008 Several readers have complained about new release availability on Netflix, including this comment from Dan: Theyve been hosing me really bad the last two months, and Im about to cancel my account. Theyve even been throttling the watch instant movies on me (that all started when they introduced that black box thing for the TV). On the exact day they put the tv-box think on the website, my instant movie rates have been screwed. How would you rate DVD availability on Netflix in the past few monthshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/319064140/how-would-you-r.html George Carlin on Netflix- June 24, 2008 I remember listening to George Carlin when I was a teen (those 7 words were naughty back then), and I've always enjoyed his sense of humor, so I was saddened to learn that he died earlier this week. Bradford noticed that Netflix is recommending his DVDs: Netflix has a page dedicated to George Carlin, and it includes most of his work on DVD.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/319060872/george-carlin-o.html New Releases for June 24th, 2008- June 23, 2008 Click here for the full list of new releases this week (167). Interesting titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles, In Bruges, Definitely, Maybe, Persepolis, 10,000 B.C., Charlie Bartlett, Finishing the Game, The Hammer, Honeydripper, Wholphin: Issue 1, (Issue 2, 3, 4, and 5), Early Edition: Season 1, Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, and The Witnesses.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/318007416/new-releases--7.html The Reason Netflix Is Dropping Profiles- June 20, 2008 Adrian Cockcroft, Director of Web Engineering at Netflix, posted the following on the Netflix Community forum: The Netflix site was designed without profiles, then features were added continuously for a few years, then profiles were added, but with minimum disruption to existing features, rather than a ground-up redesign, then a few more years of features were added over the top. Now in some ways its too messy and its slowing down our ability to change and add new features, so a lot of...http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/316539239/the-reason-netf.html Netflix Improperly Charging Sales Tax at the North Pole- June 20, 2008 The North Pole NewsMiner reports that Netflix might be improperly charging sales tax to residents of the North Pole. Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey explained how they determine if they should charge sales tax: Netflix corporate communications vice president Steve Swasey said the online DVD rental giant is judicious in its efforts to make sure it applies the correct tax rates when billing customers all 8.2 million of them. He said it was looking into the North Pole-area complaints Tuesday to.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/316476332/netflix-imprope.html Interesting Patent on Queue Notification System- June 20, 2008 A reader tipped me off to Patent 7,389,243, awarded this week and filed in 2004 by John N. Gross. Here's a quick overview of the patent: A notification system method is disclosed for alerting subscribers to a status of their rental queues. The system includes a number of components that interoperate to improve a subscriber's experience, including an intelligent queue monitor which works on hisher behalf to ensure that an adequate and interesting list of titles are brought to the attention of...http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/316471080/interesting-pat.html Little App Factory Stops Development of Netflix Freak- June 19, 2008 The Little AppFactory has decided to discontinue work on Netflix Freak, an excellent program for managing your Netflix account. According to the website: After much discussion, we have decided to discontinue development of Netflix Freak. We will make every effort to continue to support the product as long as we feasibly can. Keeping up with changes on Netflix's website without direct access to their data has proven to consume too many resources relative to our sales, and in some cases, we have..http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HackingNetflix/~3/315767633/little-app-fact.html |