Netflix CEO Says He Wants to Be On All Consoles

When it comes to Netflix and home consoles, right now Microsoft has them all locked up. But Netflix' CEO, Reed Hastings, says that eventually he wants to be on all the consoles. During an interview with Reuter's he had the following to say:

Eventually we want to be on all the game consoles, all the Blu-ray players, all the Internet TVs. So we are working in parallel with all of those efforts. Currently our Xbox deal is exclusive and we haven’t characterized it more than that.

You can currently access your Netflix accounts on Wii by going through the Play On service, which is itself a very nice way to get streaming video on your Wii. We reported on it a few weeks ago and gave our impressions of the service, though it would be handy to be able to select a Netflix channel on the Wii's Menu.

He went on to say:

There will be people doing DVD-by-mail in 15 or 20 years, so I think DVD will last a long time. Our best guess is that DVD will peak for us in 5 or so years. But it is continuing to grow. And the streaming is exploding. So we are getting nice growth in the DVD side and huge growth on the streaming side.

Even they know eventually everyone will be streaming all of their media content, even if that is still a few years away. I keep saying I want to get rid of all my physical media. I like the convenience of being able to open up a menu, see the boxes of all my movies and just pick one. I like to collect things, but movies and games take up a lot of space if you are into collecting.

What about you guys? Do you want to see Netflix coming to Wii. I use Play On to watch content from Hulu and Netflix already on my Wii so I can wait a bit longer. We've got a good temporary solution right now. Do you look forward to the day when you'll be able to turn on your system of choice and watch movies or play games from the same place? Or do you like your game machine to be a game machine?

Play On Beta Allows Streaming Video on Wii

If you're the type of person who likes to watch streaming video on your TV, but you only have a Wii, well this might be an option for you. The beta for Play On's streaming video is now available for Wii. You can get it here.
It will install a program on your computer that will allow you to watch Netflix, Hulu, CBS, Youtube and more on your television. You can find all the details on the website. I'm on my way to try it now. I'll update this story when I find out how it works.

Update!!!:

After playing around with the service for a few minutes it would be hard not to recommend this to people looking for a way to stream video onto their TV through their Wii. The program is a very quick install, about 20MB, and is easy to setup. You can set up your Netflix accounts, Hulu accounts, and other things very quickly. Any of the content in your ques on those services show up with screen captures in a few user friendly menu on the Play On service on Wii.

To get to your videos on your console you have to have the Internet Channel installed and go to http://wii.playon.tv . The system will look for any computer you have in your house that has Play On installed and it even recognized my computer even when it was turned off. All the video services you have linked to your account show up on the left hand side of the TV. You simply have to click on one and it will pull your que up. All of the videos are in standard definition so you HD snobs out there will have to look elsewhere for that video quality.

The streaming quality was very good. I never had any issues with the picture skipping or the video having to buffer. It was just like watching it on my television. The one drawback is that you'll have to manage those services individually on your computer before loading it up on your Wii. Early impressions are the service will be well worth the $40 asking price especially because you can have a large number of services available all in one place. This is shaping up to be a very good service for Wii owners.