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View Full Version : NetFlix's "Watch It Now" works well in Ubuntu/VirtualBox.



MetalMusicAddict
March 9th, 2008, 08:55 PM
For people outside the states/dont know. NetFlix (http://www.netflix.com)


http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/4154/screenshot1resizedhz6.jpg (http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/699/screenshot1ep0.jpg)
CLICK PIC

Use THIS (http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2008/02/01/how-to-do-seamless-window-integration-with-ubuntu-virtualbox) guide.

Have a beefy PC as well. Remember, you're running an entire OS virtually.

You will also need to have WMP11 and NetFlix's apps installed. (will prompt you for this.)

Not really and ideal solution but works pretty well. Even works in full-screen. I was thinking it wouldn't work as I haven't had good luck with things using DirectX.

SegaBoy0
March 13th, 2008, 07:02 PM
Just wanted to say thanks for this. I saw it on HackingNetflix.com and I think I might give it a shot.

Hopefully Netflix makes this easier for *nix users in the near future. Or AT LEAST allows Windows users to view movies through Firefox.

timcredible
March 13th, 2008, 07:06 PM
netflix won't even return my emails asking why they don't support linux. if you look at the requirements, they require the drm version of windows, so they'll never make it work for linux. i don't know if macs have drm or not.

bottom line for me - i think they should offer a discount to those not using windows since we can't access the movies online, but , like i say, they won't even send me an email, let alone change their pricing structure.

Zipster90
March 13th, 2008, 07:12 PM
I've had fairly good success streaming movies from Netflix with WinXP running in VMWare. If only I had a better DSL connection...

Sunflower1970
March 13th, 2008, 07:39 PM
Ahh. Thanks for this. Never even occured to me to try out netflix in a Virtual box. :)

I'd be using it on a Pentium IV 2.2 ghz 1.5 gig ram..Hope that'll be a good enough machine to use this... :unsure:

MetalMusicAddict
March 13th, 2008, 08:00 PM
netflix won't even return my emails asking why they don't support linux.

Firefox is the best we'll get. They're supposed to be working on it.


Ahh. Thanks for this. Never even occured to me to try out netflix in a Virtual box. :)

I'd be using it on a Pentium IV 2.2 ghz 1.5 gig ram..Hope that'll be a good enough machine to use this... :unsure:

Should be plenty.

I was really shocked this worked because like I said I'm pretty sure it uses DX and I never had much luck with it under visualization.

SZF2001
March 13th, 2008, 08:17 PM
Hey, can't you just use ie4linux (or whatever that was called)? Or maybe IE in Wine? That seems a little too extreme to run an entire other OS virtually just to watch a movie.

Heh... The things people have to do to watch something legitably...

n3tfury
March 13th, 2008, 09:24 PM
dvd's ftw, but nice head's up metal

jrusso2
March 13th, 2008, 10:46 PM
Hey, can't you just use ie4linux (or whatever that was called)? Or maybe IE in Wine? That seems a little too extreme to run an entire other OS virtually just to watch a movie.

Heh... The things people have to do to watch something legitably...

Netflix requires IE, WMP 11 and active x. Only IE works with WINE

brice.timmons
March 15th, 2008, 09:30 PM
When I try to run the player I get a black screen with no video controls, the title of the movie, and a button that says "back to browsing".

Netflix support said that this happens when there are problems within WMP 11. I have run the Software Development Kit recommended by Netflix and rolled back and reinstalled WMP 11 to no avail.

My machine is a Pentium IV 1.8 MHz with 2 gb of ram, and a 128 mb Radeon video card. The VM is dedicated 1gb of ram, and 64 mb of vram. The VM disk has 3.3gb of space available. I have this problem running in both seamless and windowed mode.

Any ideas?

Eutaw
March 29th, 2008, 09:08 PM
Try rainlinks.com
It doesn't have quite as many movies as netflix, but it works without fuss.

fedex1993
March 29th, 2008, 09:14 PM
how much is netflix anyway for the net verision might be helpful for me since i like to watc movies and never seem to go out to go buy it and downloading takes forever

banjobacon
March 29th, 2008, 09:49 PM
how much is netflix anyway for the net verision might be helpful for me since i like to watc movies and never seem to go out to go buy it and downloading takes forever

There is no streaming only version. Unlimited streaming is included in most plans, with the exception being the cheapest plan, which is $4.99/month.

The cheapest plan that includes unlimited streaming is the the one-at-a-time (unlimited) plan, which costs $8.99.

ToySouljah
April 15th, 2008, 08:01 AM
netflix won't even return my emails asking why they don't support linux. if you look at the requirements, they require the drm version of windows, so they'll never make it work for linux. i don't know if macs have drm or not.

bottom line for me - i think they should offer a discount to those not using windows since we can't access the movies online, but , like i say, they won't even send me an email, let alone change their pricing structure.

I don't think they'll offer us a discount since they never actually charged for it in the first place. Actually, the price did go down a while back also...lol :)

shanepardue
April 25th, 2008, 04:39 PM
This feature doesn't work well for me in Virtualbox..I get bad window tearing and
slowness of video. I'm running decent hardware so I doubt that's the issue.

MaindotC
July 16th, 2008, 06:39 AM
MetalMusic - thank you so much for providing the link to the tutorial! This is my first experience with seamless mode and its pretty cool. I can't play the videos full screen but that's fine because I usually have five-or-more and something else going at the same time so it works fine for me :) Still a bummer I can't go full screen, though :(

Abit AV8 (http://www.uabit.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=48&page=1&model=175)
ATI x850 (http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonx850/index.html)
4 GB Memory (http://corsair.com/configurator/product_results.aspx?id=2351)
250GB Maxtor SATA (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=365dec70fce8f010VgnVCM100000dd 04090aRCRD&vgnextchannel=f424072516d8c010VgnVCM100000dd04090a RCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Support)

MaindotC
July 25th, 2008, 08:30 AM
One thing I've been doing is changing the resolution from 1600 x 1200 to something like 1024 x 768 when running netflix. This stops all the choppiness!

mrgnash
July 25th, 2008, 11:27 AM
Not interested unless they support Linux natively.

cinger
August 31st, 2010, 01:32 PM
My video playback is also choppy. Tried adjusting screen resolution to 1024x768 from 1152x864 as mentioned previously but no avail. Max for this system is 2048x2048.

Running 10.04 on fresh install, gnome 2.30.0, kernel 2.6.32-24-generic, 2.0 GiB memory, Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.40 GHz, 49.8 GiB available space. Running Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2.6 r63112. Set up virtual xp sp3 using youtube tutorial posted on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuyPJFhVTxQ . Virtual machine set up with 984 MB base memory, 32 MB video memory, 3d vid acc enabled, 2d vid acc disabled. i recall setting it up with a 10 GiB partition originally but wonder if that fact conflicts with base memory listed at 984 mb. When I ran Xp only netflix instant worked well.

Any ideas on whether or not this system could support non-choppy video playback? Suggestions appreciated, let me know if I can provide any other specs.

(enclosed please find an icon representing me eating popcorn and getting my netfix.):popcorn:

Pogeymanz
August 31st, 2010, 07:34 PM
I've done this on a computer with 1GB RAM, allotting only 384MB to WinXP in Virtualbox and it ran fine in Firefox.

You have to be running Windows as Linux does not have DRM built in.