PS3 Netflix Hands-On

I came home last Friday night to a nice little red envelope surprise in my mailbox. The Netflix enabling Blu-Ray for the PS3 had arrived, and I was excited. See, while I've been enjoying Netflix instant streaming capabilities on my Xbox 360 for months now, I haven't been able to take advantage of our apartment's 42" 1080i TV and 5.1 surround sound because the 360 is in my room, on a 22" HDTV. Sad, I know. Also not quite the setup required to get the most out of Transmorphers. And before you ask, that isn't a typo.

So I took the Netflix disc, threw it into my PS3 with such force and began the streaming. And it was good. Now a lot of people have complained about having to use a disc every time you want to load up Netflix on the PS3 (Have we really become that lazy?). But let's face facts; you constantly put in video games, dvds, blu-rays into our console, one more disc to slide into that drive isn't going to kill you. So once you've mustered enough energy to get Netflix started, you'll find a very intuitive, yet slightly sluggish, menu system letting you access your instant queue, as well as all the searchable categories/ genres to find new movies and tv shows. 

And in a way, I found finding movies and watching them right away is an easier experience on the PS3 than it is on the Xbox 360. On the 360 you have to find movies, select them and then add them to your instant queue. You then have to go into your instant queue and launch them from there. On the PS3 you can browse genres/ categories of film, find a movie you want to watch and start it right there, completely skipping over the need to add it to your queue first. This also works for individual episodes of a tv show. If you find a show you want to watch, you can select a certain season and pick any episode to watch without involving the instant queue. Shows and movies also have handy descriptions written right on their main page so don't have to flip through a bunch of "blades" to read what a show/ movie is about. That's right, I might be lazy about some things.

Also, some gaming news outlets have run early reports that the PS3's version of Netflix doesn't run in HD, instead maxing out at 480p. Not true. I was watching episodes of 30 Rock in 720p within minutes of loading up the disc. And Salma Hayek in high-definition is a beautiful thing indeed. In fact, to take it a little further, I encountered zero loading issues for HD programs. They launched almost instantly, without a hitch in sight. Also never cutting out to rebuffer due to a drop in bandwidth. Watching HD programs was as silky smooth as standard definition flicks.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with Sony's solution to Xbox 360's Netflix instant streaming. Yes, you need to use a disc to access it and that might be a inconvenience to some. Unfortunately. But the Netflix Blu-ray disc is a short term solution, quickly providing PS3 users access to the Netflix service until a firmware update hits the PS3 next year. An update that will fully integrating the Netflix service into the console's OXM bar without having to use any sort of disc. Until then, the Netflix Blu-ray for the PS3 is a welcome piece of software that helps the PS3 live up to it's new tagline; it does everything.