There’s no need to wait for Netflix and Microsoft to officially ink an Xbox 360 deal. Yesterday, Lifehacker posted details of a new add-in for Vista Media Center, called vmcNetflix, that brings a plethora of Netflix features into Media Center, and consequently your Xbox 360. It’s the same concept I wanted to build for Hulu, if Hulu wasn’t doing it already. Some of the features:
- Stream WatchNow movies directly to the Media Center player.
- Download WatchNow movies to a "Watch Later" gallery.
- Support for Vista Extenders on both x86 and x64 platforms.
- Support for Netflix Instant Queue.
- Support for Episode listings.
- Search for movies by keyword.
- Browse DVD and WatchNow movies by genres.
- Sort Gallery by Title, Year, or Star Rating.
- View your queue, history, and recommendations.
- Add, remove, move movies in your queue.
- Supports DVD/Movie Parental Controls
Just one more reason why Windows is a fantastic platform for software development. vmcNetflix is still a beta, although it looks like they are full-steam-ahead for a v1 release any day now. I’m not a Netflix user, so my testing it would be pointless. Any of you have any experience with this app? If so, drop me a comment.
[via Joystiq]
Update: Some people are calling this a hack. It’s not, it’s called an add-in. A hack makes it sound like you’re opening up some secret setting in the Xbox 360 or something. If this were on AppleTV, it would be a hack, because AppleTV is a closed system and not a platform. Windows Media Center is a pluggable platform from which lots of people build applications.