Netflix has proven to be very successful with its online movie rental service. Netflix also offer subscribers a streaming instant movie service that allows users to watch movies on the PC or TV with appropriate hardware.

The problem for users on Mac computers that are Netflix members is that there was no streaming media player for the Mac. Netflix has now announced the latest version of its instant watching service based on Microsoft Silverlight. The new player will allow users on Intel-based Mac systems to enjoy streaming titles.

Earlier in the year, Netflix announced their plan to increase Blu-ray titles and even hinted the possibility of raising fees on monthly subscribers with the Blu-ray renting option. They’ve done it. Users are receiving e-mails confirming the fee. The company notified its customers of a fee increase of $1 plus tax per month for subscribers with unlimited Blu-ray movies. While the increase sucks at even $1, I don’t see those wanting BD content going back to DVD. Of course in this economy a dollar is worth hanging onto. Netflix e-mail below.

Netflix online movie rental service is showing that they are not going to be left behind as online digital video content continues to evolve with an announcement on Monday that they are offering unlimited streaming videos to their unlimited rental customers. Subscribers with a minimum $8.99 per month account can take advantage of more than 90,000 DVD titles streamed to their PC for no additional cost and no limit.

Netflix shook up the video rental industry when it launched back in 1998 as the first internet store to offer DVD rentals which had a flat monthly fee and only limited by the number of videos a customer could possess at a time. This new offer extends the unlimited video content to customer’s PCs, which was previously limited to an hour of content per month for each dollar spent on a monthly subscription through the Watch Now program. Lower, $4.99 per month subscribers can get still get two hours of streaming video per month with the new offer.

Netflix is set to launch their set-top box with the help of LG electronics. The union will allow subscribers to watch movies directly from the Internet to their TV’s. Netflix presently has upwards of 7 million subscribers, many of which have been waiting for this service. They are hoping to launch the set-top box by mid 2008. The price will range between $4.99 to about $16.99 a month, all inclusive of rates. Apparently, LG would embed the receiver into its $799 dual-DVD player, which supports the competing Blu-ray and HD-DVD high-definition DVD formats.

Vudu Inc, which already offers a set-top box for $399 lets consumers buy or rent movies from a selection of about 5,000 titles. Netflix on the other hand has about 90,000 titles available through their online mail order service. Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings sees it as a huge opportunity and said the LG partnership was the first of many such deals for the company.

A new service from Netflix will allow subscribers to immediately watch movies and television series on their personal computers.

Subscribers will continue to receive DVDs by mail according to their current plan, but subscribers will soon have the added option of instantly watching about 1,000 movies and TV series on their PCs. The new feature will be made available in subscribers’ monthly membership plans at no additional cost.

The Netflix service features a real-time playback technology which drastically cuts down on the time to begin playing to as little as 10 to 15 seconds. The service requires the one-time installation of a browser applet. The applet allows movies to be paused or immediately jumped to any point in the movie.

Bandwidth requirements are kept to a minimum of one megabit per second. With more bandwidth you will be able to …