It looks like despite some denials from Sony in the past, a survey is being conducted to gauge the public’s interest in streaming movies and TV shows to their game console. The service on PS3 might require a one-time purchase of a $9.99 “Netflix Instant Streaming Disc” that would be inserted to stream video, but otherwise the cost would be free.

The survey asks which is your favorite console, then if you’d be interested in this service. Seems like the Wii would be a natural contender as well. At any rate it looks like it is coming our way soon. You can check out the survey below.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that by late this year or in 2010, Netflix might let users get rid of the red envelopes and subscribe just to their streaming service. Reed realizes that in order to maintain their current level of success, it has to “nail” the streaming aspect.

Most of us envision streaming becoming more popular in the coming years. It’s faster cheaper and it’s great for them if they can strong-arm studios into providing new releases for download. There was no talk of pricing, but Netflix has always been pretty fair.

The economic crisis has taken it’s toll on many industries, but not Netflix. Consumers are happy to sit on their butts and escape through a goods movie. The streaming and mailing movie rental company is doing just fine. They closed 2008 with 9.4 million customers and today they announced that they’ve broken the 10 million mark.

The company has added 600,000 net subscribers since January 1st alone. It’s likely only going to go up as customers choose their service over theater tickets or going out on the town to eat.

In an effort to make one console appeal to gamers more than the competition, console makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are adding new features. With the global economy down the console makers are also adding features to make gaming systems perform tasks outside of gaming to broaden their appeal.

One such feature was the addition of Netflix streaming capability to the Xbox 360. The Netflix application was made available for Netflix and Xbox Live Gold customers in November of 2008. In the roughly three months since the Netflix application was made available Microsoft says that over a million Xbox 360 owners have installed and activated the Netflix application.

Some great news for Netflix customers. According the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, they’re starting to test Saturday shipping during the first quarter of 2009, but apparently only in “certain parts of the country.” So, normally if you send back a disc on Friday, you would have to wait for Monday for your next disc to ship.

If Netflix receives it on a Saturday, you could receive your next disc as quickly as Monday. That is, if you live close enough to a distribution center to get one day delivery. That should make a lot of people happy. It’s only one day, but still. We like everything now!

There is more than a little truth to the fact that when money is tight and the economy sucks, people want to spend what little money they do have on things that take their mind off how bad the economy sucks. Thanks to that fact entertainment industries tend to weather recessions pretty well.

Netflix is among the companies that are still doing well despite the weak economy. Netflix has announced its Q4 2008 financials for its year ending on December 31, 2008. The mail-order movie rental service finished the quarter with 9,390,000 subscribers for a 26% growth compared to the same quarter of 2007.

The Roku Netflix player was the first device to support streaming movie rentals from Netflix and ushered in an array of devices supporting the Netflix streaming service. One of the best features of the original Roku Player was the cheap $99 price tag.

Roku announced today that its Digital Video Player now supports HD streams of films from Netflix. Other HD streaming partners will reportedly be added to the Roku player as well. The additional providers are expected to debut in q1 2009.

Online movie rentals are one of the most convenient ways for movie fans to get their favorite films without leaving the house. The catch is that many of the newest releases aren’t available for streaming rentals. Netflix offers a streaming on demand library of 12,000 movies and TV shows to its subscribers.

Several hardware devices will allow Netflix members to access the streaming content including the Xbox 360 and some DVD players. Netflix and TiVo announced today that TiVo DVR subscribers would be able to access the streaming content library over certain TiVo DVRs.

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 …