Nice post today by David Pogue of the New York times about Netflix’s movie on demand service ‘Watch Instantly’:

Awash In a Stream Of Movies

I’ve been hammering on about this fantastic service for what seems like ages:

Ben Kingsley Doesn’t Do It For Me / Transsiberian

‘Watch Instantly’ isn’t perfect by an any means – a lot of the more ‘obscure’ titles I’m into they don’t have, and there’s many a gripe about New Releases not being available:

Netflix, why aren’t you streaming new movies?

Of course this leads to piracy – I don’t pirate movies of course, but my friend Jeff Love does – and if Jeff can’t find a new movie right away on Netflix or Hulu then you know Jeff’s gonna Bittorrent the heck out of it:

The 2009 Oscar Nominated Films: Pirated Copies Available Everywhere

But Jeff and I know what we like – and big budget pictures, (even faux indies like Slumdog Millionaire), spend millions marketing themselves to you, (10 million dollars to market Benjamin Button? Are you kidding me?  While he was getting younger I was aging faster watching that movie).  Anyhew, my point is that we know these big budget pictures exist – and now that massive amounts of streaming content are available – with, as David points out, the friction of making a bad decision removed, what we really need is a fantastic recommendation service.

Something like jinni perhaps,

jinni – New Movie Recommendation Service Any Good?

folded in with recommendations abstracted from a trusted group of friends – or patterns drawn out from people’s taste you like?

So if you’re a fan of my genial co-host Professor Dr. Gareth Higgins taste in film you would just press the ‘Higgins Button’ and BAM, a pic is selected for you based upon an ever-evolving/dynamic profile abstracted from Gareth’s film usage.

We shall see – it’s going to be an interesting time!; (assuming we’re not all melting down our fancy machines for scrap metal to pay for Thunderdome tickets.  Don’t forget, 2 men enter, 1 man leaves).

On a side note, Netflix is great and all but what about 3D? 10 Movies Hollywood Should Convert to 3D Immediately

Also a handy tip for fans of Watch Instantly – it’s a big pain to find exactly what films are available to Play on Demand – the search functions and UI leave a lot to be desired.  So hat tip to ReadWriteWeb for steering me to this site that catalogs all the streaming content available:

instantwatcher.com  – netflix for impatient people

As Gareth said to me last week after he used Watch Instantly for the first time, “Now I’ll never get anything done again.  Ever.”