A few months after Netflix launched their “watch instantly” streaming feature I tried to get it running on the computer hooked to our TV. I didn’t get very far though, since it required WinXP, and the computer was (and still is) running windows 2000. In addition, our DSL speed at the time was only 1.5Mbps, which wasn’t enough for their top quality.

I decided to give it another shot though. I haven’t upgraded the TV computer, yet, so I thought I’d try and run it from VMWare Fusion on a Mac laptop I use. The good news is that it works — I thought that DRM restrictions would prevent it from working in a virtual machine.

The bad news is that the quality is truly mediocre, even using our 3Mbit connection, and from what I can tell, a faster connection won’t help.

It’s too bad, because the price is right, unlike the $3.99 rentals on iTunes. I only wish Netflix had the option to queue up a higher quality version to watch later.