I was almost jumping for joy when I read that Netflix will begin to offer over 6,000 movies streaming (via your computer) if you pay $8.99 or more for their DVD rental service. The jumping never happened, though. Why? I use a Macbook and the harsh reality of NonApple friendly Netflix streaming sunk in. Finally Netflix posted this explanation (I would’ve posted the link but looks like you can only access it if you have an account):

Apple does not license their DRM solution to third parties, which has made this more difficult, but we are working with the studios and content owners to gain approval for other solutions. As soon as a studio-approved DRM for the Mac is available to us, whether from Apple or another source, we will move quickly to provide a movie viewer that enables you to watch movies from Netflix instantly on your Mac.

In the meantime, you can use your account to watch instantly on any compatible PC, and Intel-based Macintosh computers can watch movies instantly using Boot Camp, Parallels, or Fusion to run Windows.

The good news is that MacRumors is reporting that Netflix plans to resolve this issue sometime in ’08. No actual hard date set yet. Too bad I deleted my copy of XP.

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