every day i write the book

Just got my Netflix Wii Streaming disc in the mail today. Let me walk you through the process.

I haven’t used my Wii in a little while, so when I popped in the disc, I had to wait through 2 consecutive software updates to use the disc.

Now that’s done, and I see the Netflix icon in the top left of the home screen.

Clicking on the icon, I can choose to Start or to go back to the Wii menu.

I have to activate my Wii so I can stream from Netflix. I do this by taking a code from the screen

and going to http://www.netflix.com/Wii and entering the code.

I do this, and now I’m told: “Your Netflix ready device is being activated. This may take up to 3 minutes. Once activation is complete you may add movies and TV episodes to your instant Queue and watch on your TV via your Netflix ready device. If you encounter any problems with activation, request a new activation code from your Netflix ready device, come back here, and try again”

In the time it took to write that paragraph, I’m ready. Much quicker than 3 minutes.

My TV screen now shows my Instant Queue in a Cover Flow-like interface. Kind of reminds me of boxee.

I can browse my instant queue by genre or I can flip through the DVD images on the horizontal scroll bar.

Clicking on an image takes me to details about the movie, again, looks a lot like boxee. From here I can play the movie or remove it from my queue. I can also rate the movie from here or go back to the prior screen.

Clicking Play goes online to retrieve the movie. I have cable internet and it took about 8 seconds to grab. The picture quality is amazing and it plays seamlessly. Can’t even tell it’s not on a disc in the DVD player or on TV. Awesome. I’m going to really enjoy this.

Update:

Accidental discovery: If you click the ‘trigger’ button on the Wii-mote, you can pause the show, then either resume, play from the beginning or remove from the queue.