Netflix Makes It Super Easy to Download a Super Movie

I finally got around to trying the instant watch feature included with my Netflix membership. After browsing the collection of movies available for instant download, I decided to go a little retro with the 1978 version of Superman: The Movie.

Starting the movie couldn’t have been simpler. I just clicked the Play button and Netflix notified me that I needed to download the player software one time only. After a painless install of the software, my movie began playing within seconds. Nothing to it. I especially enjoyed the full screen feature which effortlessly made my browser window disappear and gave me a richer movie-viewing experience..

Now I should point out that my review up until this point was written with noobies in mind. I did actually encounter one technical snafu that was easily overcome. Oh yeah, and I also didn’t watch the movie on my computer in my home office. I watched it on my 42? television in my living room.

Noobies, proceed with caution

So if you are a noobie feel free to stop reading at this point. If you are a not-so-noobie or are just curious as to how I did what I did then by all means, please read on.

First things first. The technical snafu. I use Firefox as my default Internet browser. I quickly found out that Internet Explorer is required for the instant watch feature on Netflix’s web site. This can be overcome one of two ways (although I’m sure there are more). The first is to just close down Firefox and open up Internet Explorer (you can have both installed on your computer at once without any issues), repeat the process of finding the movie and going on about your business. The second method, the one that I used, is to install a Firefox plugin called IE Tab which actually simulates Internet Explorer right from within your Firefox browser. In other words, it tricks web sites into thinking you are running Internet Explorer.

So how did I get the movie to play on my television? It actually isn’t that complicated (so I say) if you have the right cables. My first step was to connect my laptop up to my television. Although there are several cabling choices available to do this, I happen to be lucky enough to have a PC IN connector on my TV meaning my television can actually double as a computer monitor using a standard analog monitor cable (sometimes referred to as a VGA cable). Since that cable only handled video, I used a second mini-headphone style cable to connect the headphone jack on my laptop to the PC audio in connector on my television.

With this configuration all I had left to do was tap the correct keystroke combination on my laptop to tell it to redirect its output to an external video source and voila, my computer screen showed up on my television. And since my computer screen was now displaying on my television, when I went to play the Netflix movie on my laptop, the movie actually played on my television.

Hey, I did say this last part wasn’t for noobies, didn’t I?