About the time I got my coupon for a digital converter box I got fed up with my cable company. All I wanted was to be able to watch the very few TV shows that I enjoy and PBS. Cable was going to charge me some outrageous price to watch basic cable so I dumped them and switched my internet from cable to DSL and got my TV from over the air channels using the digital converter box. We were getting most of our movies we wanted to watch using Netflix getting the 2 DVDs out at a time for $14 a month was a real bargain. No more trips to the video store and we could control our choices from our computer. I knew they had streaming video you could watch on your computer screen but one day I thought I want to watch these on my TV.
I started thinking about taking the outputs of my laptop and hooking them up to the video input to my TV when the same day I see an article talking about Netflix releasing a disk so you can get Netflix through a Wii. WOW we had just purchased a Wii for Christmas for the whole family and it hooks up to the internet with a wireless network adapter that is built in. I got on Netflix site and reserved our disk, it wasn't but a few days later when Netflix announced that they were shipping Wii disks. I clicked on a button to have them send me our disk right away and the disk showed up the next day!
After inserting the Neflix disk into our Wii we were up and running in no time. All we had to do was enter a number off of the disk online on Netflix to activate. Now we can watch any movie available for instant view anytime we want, or we can pick from a large selection of TV shows. (I can watch Myth Busters again, yeah!) The Wii doesn't show everything available for instant view, you can search online and add movies and TV shows to your instant queue, they then show up instantly on the Wii to watch. If you can't watch the whole show you can exit out of it and Netflix remembers where you left off.
I always thought Netflix was a bargain for DVD rentals. But for $8.99 per month you can have DVD rentals and unlimited streaming video into your home. The quality of the videos isn't HDTV quality but so what, they are crystal clear and as nice as any DVD I have rented. You can also get disks for the other game consoles and internet connected devices, the selection is large.
I would have to say this is the biggest home entertainment bargain available today, I love it! Now my problem is trying to keep my kids from turning into TV vegetables. It looks nice outside maybe we will go for a bike ride.
