Netflix Streaming on Computers
Posted December 28th, 2009 @ 09:51pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I'm not sure when Netflix removed the "Install Silverlight or streaming won't work on Macs," but I noticed last night that it now works in both Firefox and Safari. Yippee! It is installed, even though I never installed it. It's bundled with Office, though, and I'm guessing something else installed it along the way.
Which is great, because I was having a hell of a time connecting to Netflix from the Xbox 360 last night. It just wasn't going through, and it asked me to authorize the console yet again.
Now I can finish Dexter, Season 2.
Donate Life
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 4:44am #
The free Flip4Mac WMV codec (sponsored by Microsoft) also bundles Silverlight now. Sadly, it's an opt-out custom install, and there's no way of getting a package without Silverlight in it.
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 10:05am #
Thanks Jesper. I bet that's it.
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 2:56pm #
Sneaky installers FTL. I wonder why you are having so many problems with the Xbox/Netflix streaming Erik. Gotta be completely frustrating. I'm sure you probably did this already, but have you tried the Xbox wired directly to your head router? Or even directly to the internet connection? I found that when I had a probably connecting for a while to Xbox Live, bypassing my router entirely worked great. Helped me track down the problem to a improperly functioning DD-WRT install on my router. Since you have so many components making up your network infrastructure, it might pay to remove all of it and try adding it back piece by piece.
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 3:40pm #
[quote comment="56580"]I wonder why you are having so many problems with the Xbox/Netflix streaming Erik.[/quote]
I'm not really having too many problems now. Not with Netflix. The one time it was acting up it was because I was stupid (gave the DVR and the Xbox the same IP). The time I mentioned up above here was a one-time thing, I think - I successfully streamed an entire movie the other day (Muppets).
[quote comment="56580"]I'm sure you probably did this already, but have you tried the Xbox wired directly to your head router?[/quote]
It's plugged into the main APEBS. It's fine now connecting to Xbox Live. I just tried now and successfully streamed an Xbox 360 movie from Netflix… after I activated the Xbox 360 again. I wonder if Netflix doesn't like having a PS3 and an Xbox 360 streaming content. Maybe their authorization server was acting funny the other day and that's why I couldn't connect. I don't know.
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 8:00pm #
Over the last several months, I have on several occasions, been streaming Netflix to two Xbox360s and 2 laptops simultaneously (completely maxed out my downstream bandwidth). I believe the max number of authorized devices you can have is 6. Not sure what the simultaneous usage limit is... Glad to hear that it's working again for you. What a pain in the butt.