After a hard day of work nothing is better then coming home to your own home theater with your new sixty inch HD plasma TV that you got for the holidays and putting on a movie. Grabbing a big tub of popcorn and adding all the extra butter that your doctor warned you against. So lean back and get ready to enjoy the show. Well if you’re watching your movies through Netflix on your Xbox 360 there are a few bugs in the system that may ruin the experience.
5 – New Release Categories – Turn on your Xbox 360, load up Netflix and look for a new movie release. Have you found one yet? Yes I am sure you are like me and are having a hard time finding new releases. If you could see a list of new releases on the Netflix instant watch all you would see are the same six movies in the list all the time. They do have a category on new releases but those are new releases to Netflix instant watch not new movie releases, So it’s a bit of misleading the user. I would like to see a new release category because I want to watch new movies not old movies with fancy new boxes. I would even be happy with a way to sort movies by release date. Well I want to be popular around the water cooler again so Netflix show me the new releases.
4 – Break Free From the Microsoft Box – What I mean is that Netflix, Facebook, Zune all have the standard Xbox360 user interface. It’s a very visual menu system with lots of big boxes and graphics. It’s often too overwhelming to look for movies quickly. You can’t view the description of the movie unless you click on the movie and it opens up another page. Then once you get into that page you have to scroll over to the right to see the description. Xbox 360 is really geared towards power users and power users know how to navigate on Netflix. It would be one thing if this was a family console but look at the releases it’s all for the hardcore gamer. They really should think about redesigning the Netfilx for Xbox 360 interface. It could be so much more powerful then it appears. I am all about Nintendo but it feels very Nintendoish of Microsoft to keep this trend going on with new features. Have a more robust menu system that allows you to watch movies in a convenient way.
3. – Customizable Controls – How many times have you been watching a movie and accidentally hit the trigger buttons only to go shooting off thirty minutes ahead of where you were? Thus showing you that Darth Vader is in fact Luke’s father and ruining the entire movie. Well enough of that, I want more control! Nobody has the remote control for the Xbox 360 anymore now that the HD-DVD player has died out so what are we to do? Sure I could go out and buy a controller but something else should be done for those without the remote. You have to have bomb maker nerves and precession to lay down the 360 controller as not to accidentally hit the triggers. Every time I am laying down the Xbox 360 controller I feel like Tiger Woods making that phone call to his mistress. Well those without the pleasure of a remote could use for some chapter markers as well. I think at the very least be able to change the controllers so the triggers on the controller are not fast forward and rewind. What are your thoughts on the controls?
2. – HD Categories – You might of noticed they are starting to add more and more streaming HD movies to the list, well how do 360 users find them? Often the worst movies seem to be in HD but somebody out there might want to watch American Ninja in HD besides me. I think it’s a pretty obvious solution by adding an HD category to the Xbox 360 Netflix service. It’s streaming HD so that is another discussion on how it compares to Blu Ray but we will leave that for another time. You do get better picture and sound so come on Netflix show us how to find these. If you have a slower connection you might want to be warned that you will see high compression on HD films if you don’t have the full amount of connection bars. HD is here now show it to us Netflix.
1. Search Feature – It is more annoying than trying to get 10,000 kills online for a 10g achievement, it’s more annoying then Idaho, it’s even more annoying then 5am calls from call centers trying to collect student loans that you clearly are unable to pay. How hard is it to add a search feature to the service? Sure you can go online to Netflix.com to look up titles but where is the 360 love? It’s something so simple to add but will seem so revolutionary when it comes to the service. Just add a damm search engine ! How am I to find Santa Claus conquers the martins without it?
Well the list is over and do I feel any better? Well yes to some extent I do. Getting this out it the air might affect change who knows. Either way it’s a really great service that has brought a lot of movies into my house that I might other wise not have gotten a chance to watch. There is something for everybody on Netflix, so check it out if you’re a movie fan and have an extra nine dollars a month. Please write your thoughts on the Xbox 360 Netflix experience below.
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Search feature! Yes! If that’s too much to ask for, even just a simple alphabetized list of the movies would be an improvement.
“…it’s even more annoying then 5am calls from call centers trying to collect student loans that you clearly are unable to pay.” BAHAHA. Gold.
You just sound lazy to me.