Today, Netflix announced their business expansion to America’s brother, Canada, offering their movie and TV series streaming services to residents everywhere. Better yet, if you’re a Canadian PlayStation 3 owners, today is your lucky day: the Netflix Instant Streaming capabilities on PS3s in Canada are now readily available for you to stream your favorite content, without a disc.
Ironically enough, Microsoft, the company that boasted its “exclusive partnership” with Netflix during their 2008 E3 presentation, is now the only current console that can not stream to Canada.
For the uninformed: Netflix is a media-to-mailbox rental service that revolutionized the way Americans rent movies in 2008 when they brought unlimited TV and Movie streaming to the masses. What started as an initial bonus feature for subscribers grew to Netflix’s most valuable service as streaming became increasingly available, first for both Mac & PC’s, and then eventually to each of the three current generation video game console.
Currently, a contractual stipulation between Netflix and Microsoft requires all streaming of Netflix content to PlayStation 3’s and Nintendo Wii‘s to utilize a disc, however this will be rectified in October. Interestingly, there is no date currently set for Microsoft to bring service to their system, the first of all consoles to allow Netflix streaming. As was tweeted by Larry Hryb aka Major Nelson:
“Now that #Netflix is in Canada, we are working on bringing it to the Xbox 360 for Canadian #XboxLIVE members. NO ETA yet though.”
However, for Canadian residents everywhere, a Netflix icon is readily available on the PlayStation 3’s XMB, so you can start streaming your favorite episode of “Kids in the Hall” right now, for just C$7.99 a month.
What could make this deal any better? How about a free month of streaming: Check out www.netflix.com/ps3 to tap into this special trial offer instantly.
And for all you French speaking Canadians out there, rest assured that multi-language capabilities are on their way.
