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According to a source, you can opt into the new Netflix Watch Instantly movie player.  The source is The Official Netflix Blog, so it’s probably accurate.  This brings Netflix’s movie player to OS X for the first time (without running Windows) by using Microsoft’s Silverlight.

If you’re a slider and you use both Mac and Windows machines, once you opt into the Silverlight experience, you’re locked into to it for both platforms.  If you’re a Windows-only user, you may wonder why bother with opting in at all?  Well, maybe you hate Internet Explorer and you’ve always wanted to watch Netflix in Firefox.  This is your chance.

However, there is no opting out yet.  If the experience sucks, you’re stuck.  It’s a beta, so you know what that means.  I’m using it now and have already been hit with some errors.  Some movies that used to work don’t play Silverlight yet (mostly Starz offerings). 

Go for it!  [Netflix opt-in link]
Read more at the [The Official Netflix Blog]

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Sections: Apple, Video, Accessories, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Online Music/Video

They say better late than never, and Microsoft seems to be taking this to heart in promoting their Silverlight platform, aiming to spread it as far and wide as possible, in a slew of different devices and especially in mobile phones. So far, only devices running on Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian Series 60 support Silverlight, although Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Developer Division has mentioned that they plant to implement it on even more devices very soon. So it seems that they couldn’t care less about the existence of Adobe’s Flash and Apple’s Quicktime plug-in, that they can make this claim boldly and appear confident amongst their competitors. While it may be hard to judge who will really win these plug-in wars at this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise if one of the currently existing, established and more popular platform does. It would also be interesting to see how these mobile platforms would fare with those built for the desktop, and of course against those that are meant for the Web. In the meantime, let’s wait for Microsoft to announce what mobile platform they’ll be rolling out support for next. Motorola could benefit from this, though.

Via [IntoMobile]

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Allistar Croll over at GigaOm wrote an interesting piece on Saturday about Microsofts current battles on three fronts: Consumer, Enterprise and Developer as seen from Mix08.  In each battle, Microsoft is portrayed as a lumbering giant, struggling to catch up to where Croll says are the market drivers.  Multi-front battles are tough to win, how will Microsoft face each challenge?

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“So, what is new?“ is the first question I get as I get into the taxi from in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center.  I had been trying to answer that question for the past four days.  I’ve seen seas of LCD TVs (most black, shiny and look virtually identical).  There has been lots of HD networking products, lots of talk about Blu-ray (not lots about HD-DVD, ha).  More and more iPod docks than seems necessary, but who am I to complain.

What I saw and heard a lot about is manufacturers working on technology they don’t know what they (or we) will do with.  Like Microsoft’s PopFly, a mash up for Silverlight.  According to a MS spokesperson, “we don’t have a revenue model for it yet”.  There was some push for mobile TV (ala Korea) but I am not sure if that is going to catch on.

The cabbies next question followed quickly, “what new phones are there?“  I really had hoped we’d see some response to the iPhone at this show.  I would have thought it was the perfect time to steal some thunder from Macworld, but no.  The best phone I saw was the new ROKR from Motorola that had a fuction-specific, changeable touch pad with tactile feedback.  It was amazing.  Not earth shattering, but something even the mighty iPhone should have.  FYI-We are at a Palm conference right now that I believe we’ll get to see something new so check for that and I might revise this answer.

So after he asked me questions, it was my turn.  What were other peoples answers to those question?  His answers really were not that different than my own findings: nothing super duper.  Sure there is still some innovation gone, but they are improvements to existing stuff, not market changing items.

Gadgetell is far from near reporting on what is coming down the pipe this year and I don’t think I am alone in hoping they come up with something mind blowing in the following days.  Good luck boys.

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