My wife and I had used Netflix for a longtime almost since its inception and were very happy with it. Living in Michigan, it was very nice to receive movies in the mail and have something new to watch while we stayed indoors on a snowy day.

When Blockbuster started their online service, the turn around time to our place wasn’t that great so we didn’t continue the free trial. But, later when they sweetened the deal by offering free in-store rentals while we waited for movies queued online to arrive, we jumped ship immediately.

Netflix - Watch Unlimited Movies Online

Until now. Netflix has won us over again by offering unlimited hours of online movie watching free with our 2 at-a-time subscription. If your Netflix subscription is 2 or more at-a-time level, then you can enjoy online movie watching in your computer from thousands of movies available.

The way we use it now is to catch up on TV shows we have been wanting to watch online, in our computer. My wife watches her Desperate Housewives episodes and I watch Heroes and we are both at peace.

One reason we are sticking to watching TV shows is because there are a lot of shows we had missed and that’s available on Netflix. Another is a combination of a lack of popular movies in the online library and personal preference.

Netflix Watch Now Movies on TV

I like watching movies on TV and not on my computer. I can live with watching tv shows on my laptop while I am working on my desktop computer. You might be the same way.

One thing you could do is to hook up your laptop, if you had one, to your TV via S-Video or any other hook up your tv/laptop will support to watch online movies in your TV.

Another option, is to get Roku, the only set-top device available in teh market that supports streaming Netflix’s Watch Now movies straight to your TV.

Roku Features

• Roku is priced at $99 and is definitely worth considering as the Netflix’s online offering gets bigger
• No need for lugging a computer/laptop
• Built-in wired and 802.1g wireless networking
• Firmware can be upgraded allowing new features, bug fixes, etc.
• Equipped with ethernet port and audio/video outputs: HDMI, component video, S-Video, and composite video port, digital optical audio and the standard red/white stereo analog outputs making it compatible with any kind of tv/home theater system you might have.
• Toggle switch to change aspect ratio so you can connect to old tvs as well as HDTVs.
• Gives a special key to link your online account with the box
• Setup Instant queue to see movies queued in your Netflix Player and this is separate from your DVD queue.

if you’d like a detailed review of the Roku Netflix player, CNET has a great in-depth article on video quality and technicalities.

I liked when I read that a couple of competitions to Roku are slated to release later this year which will mean better pricing for us consumers.

So, we are all set with maximizing our watching movies online part. How do we know if we are using our DVD subscription effectively?

FeedFlix

FeedFlix is a free service that analyzes your Netflix usage based on information available freely from your Netflix RSS feeds. They don’t ask for your Netflix login or password. Here are a few things FeedFlix can show you about your Netflix subscription:

• A graphical analysis of your rental activity - stats like the average number of days you keep a dvd, avg dvd returns every week, avg dvd returns by month, etc.
• Feedflix guesses your subscription and calculates the average cost of a movie for you based on your rental behavior. Could help decide if just renting from the store is cheaper for you.
• Shows the movies in queue and movies that are recommended to you.
• You get a url you can share with your friends or family to let them know what you are watching. Here is ours: http://feedflix.com/wml-1339358
• Feedflix uses this aggeragate data to show other statistics like Most Awaited Titles, Popular Movies at Home, Most Rented Titles, etc that could help you decide to arrange your queue.
• There are also other interesting stats like Most shipped days, Most popular plan, Average rental period, Avergae queue size, etc. I was surprised to see that only 1% of people actually return movies within 0-2 days of receiving it. Glad to see I am not alone.

FeedFlix is probably not something you’d use everyday but every once in a while it’ll be good to check these stats that’ll help you learn a bit more about your usage and maybe fine tune it to get the most bang for your buck.

WIth this information in hand, you can enjoy watching movies or your favorite tv shows on TV or your computer that’s best suited for your personal style and preference.

Update: 6/24

Lifehacker has posted on how to use your XBox 360 as a streaming Netflix Player

Do you use Netflix in any other way that gets you more for what you pay for? Share with us in the comments.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

The esteemed guest author (hint hint.. you should come back to write, Peter) and a great friend of mine, Pedro sent me these videos this week.

Disclaimer: If you are an animal lover or for that matter fish lover, it may not be pleasant viewing for you.

And this..

I am not a sushi eater. I guess for some it’s art and for some it’s cruelty. One thing I can say for sure is that it’s gotta suck to be in the lower end of the food chain.

What do you think?

It definitely would have been far from fun for the passengers in this Lufthansa flight. This A320 flight was caught in the crosswind and was almost blown over. When I saw it all I could say was wow! I really wouldn’t want to be on that plane.

They are guessing the wind speed when that gust almost tipped the plane over but I guess we have to give the pilot credit to get the plane off the ground again for another try..

I heard a piece on NPR radio where the host talked to the author of the book Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplance Crashes. You can hear it here.

On a side note, I let ShanKri-la’s first birthday pass by silently (Feb 26th was my first post last year). That’s because I actually registered the domain in Sep 06 but didn’t really start blogging until Feb’07. It’s been a great year of learning and I hope to learn even more in the coming year and share my finds with you. Thanks for staying with me.. looking forward to another great year!

I swear I am not a Star Wars fan. I did talk about a Darth Vader hot air balloon last friday and this week I have more Star War stuff.

Here is Star Wars according to a 3-year old!

I am sorry if you have already seen this video making the rounds this week but I couldn’t help but post about it here. My wife and I watched her atleast a dozen times already and no wonder the video has registered over 3.3+ million views already!

‘Darth Vader will GETCHA!’ is priceless! She IS going to be famous someday!.

I have my greatest respect to those who are diligent in writing posts everyday for their blogs. I have so far stuck to a schedule that works for me which 4-5 posts a week and sometimes more. I absolutely love blogging but I do that in spare time after work and in weekends.

I have tried to schedule posts but that just doesn’t work for my style. I like to post things that are on my mind that day as I think that lets me have a conversation about it not just in the post but in the comments as well with you.

It has its obvious disadvantages too with the blog getting neglected when ‘daily life’ interferes. In a blog where ‘technology meets daily life’ (ShanKri-la’ ), I’m sure you’d understand that as a reader.

We had some of our good friends over past weekend and my wife and I were busy playing hosts. Here are some of the posts that caught my attention in the past few weeeks and I wanted to share them with you in this week’s roundup:

• The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done - RT of Untwisted Vortex
  I have been reading RT’s blog ever since I saw his comments in my buddy Matt’s blog ejabs.com. He has a very personal blog and that is one of the reasons he has a great community around it.
  RT wrote a post on a personal difficulty he was facing with his wife’s illness and he was completely taken by a storm of genuine goodwil from the blogosphere. You can read all about it in this post and also check out various bloggers who helped spread the word. I wish I was able to post this in time to help spread the word myself. RT, in an attempt to pay back, writes about how the road to success is paved with stones of failure.
• How to Show Bidvertiser Feed Ads to Current Subscribers - Step-By-Step Guide - IngaOz of NiggyBuzz
  Bidvertiser is a popular alternative to Google Adsense and they have now started offering advertisements for your RSS feed. IngaOz shos you how you can add Bidvertiser ads to your RSS feed in simple steps.
• A Few Good Domains For Sale - Kyle of SlickMania
  My good friend Kyle of Kyle’s Cove has rebranded his site to SlickMania.com (RSS). Make sure you get his new RSS feed and check out his redesign effort as well.
  Kyle is one of the most friendly and helpful bloggers out there. He has opened up his domain portfolio for those interested in getting some good domain names that are for sale.
• New Gmail for the iPhone - Official Gmail Blog
  iPhone users with Gmail accounts just got a sweet treat from the Gmail team. Gmail on iPhone now sports a new interface with 2 slick features added. New mail pre-fetching is going to make getting to new emails faster. Also, when you want to get to a contact, now auto-complete works making it easier to get to the contacts with a few letters.
• Make Your DVDs View on Demand and Save Space, Too! - Tim of Daily Cup of Tech
  Tim of DCOT shows how you can use some cheap hardware and free software to build a on demand movie library from your DVD collection.
• Enso - A Humane Program Launcher - My post at TechieBuzz
  I have been using Launchy so far and I liked it. When I came across Enso Launcher, I almost wrote this post with a title ‘Is Enso Launcher a Launchy Killer?’. Then I realized that Launchy is popular because it is simple to use by everybody and Enso Launcher will become the tool of choice for those unafraid of doing things differently and learning new things. If you start using Enso Launcher, be warned of the mind-boggling productivity at your (Windows) computer you are going to start reaping from using it.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup of some great posts from the blogs I read.

You have probably heard about Joost, one of the popular Internet TV clients that made the rounds in the blogosphere for a while. I hardly hear about it anymore.

Joost was proprietary and had about 250 channels. Did you know that there is an open source alternative that has about 2500 unrestricted channels? Yes, I said 2500!

Miro is the open source version that is free and can turn your computer into an Internet TV. It is loaded with numerous features and a built-in bittorrent client that touts faster downloads. Let’s check out some of the impressive features that make up this hard to ignore piece of open source software!

Read More

I was just going through my Google Reader starred items and found these gems that I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

• Caution: Online MD5 Cracker Tool - Ryan of CybetNet News
  MD5 is a popular encoding used widely for encrypting passwords. It is scary to find out that these MD5 encryptions could be hacked. Find out how safe your passwords are.
• Flickr upload tool turns 3.0, goes open-source - Stephen at Webware
  Flickr upload tool is a favorite of many Flickr users and it has gone open source with version 3.0. At the same time, Flickr Pro users can now see statistics about who views their pictures. If you get DSL through Yahoo/AT&T, you’ll get it for free too.
• The ‘TakeTV’ Video Player - RT at UnTwisted Vortex
  RT tells you about this tiny USB drive looking TV player. Read on if you’d like TV on the go.
• Easiest way to type accents - Martin at gHacks
  If you type a lot of accent characters in your writing, you have to check out this free utility which would make your life much easier.
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007 - Gina at Lifehacker
  I love this list of top 10 apps of 2007 which lists a lot of my favorite apps. I am not a Mac user so my number would be something else. Oops did I spoil your surprise?
• PuTTY Tray - Can PuTTY Get Any Snazzier? - My post at Techie Buzz
  If you are a Linux user or even if you just use PuTTY to connect to web host, check this neat improvemnt to PuTTY.

Hope you liked these links and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Are you in our TopSpots? See our sidebar for more details!