//pardon the hijack....

For those of you who use Netflix, can you fill me in on exactly how it works? I've heard so many different things I'm not sure whats correct and whats not. My husband and I are moving into our first house soon, and while we will need cable for internet purposes, I was hoping to keep costs down by not getting 500 channels. Hah! The last time i really paid any attention to netflix is was just a mail order dvd program....

I've heard about the Roku Box, but never talked to anybody who has actually used one....Do any of you have experience with it? www.roku.com

Thanks....

It still pretty much is. You just make a list of movies you like, and then wait for them to show up, watch them, and mail them back. You can also add a movie to the next in line spot if you want. It's good if there are movies you want to see than you have time to watch. I pretty much have the reaction of "oh yeah, that one" every time I get one in the mail. It's fun.

Plus the streaming online.

www.netflix.com explains it best.

I don't use it, but here's the gist:

You pay a monthly fee for a certain number of DVDs at a time. You can keep them as long as you want, you get your next DVD when you return the first one. Turn around time is decent to good depending on where you live and how much you rent.

You also get access to online on-demand streaming based on their library. It's a lot of older movies, some TV seasons and an assortment of goodies depending on what your interests are. So you can watch those on your computer or stream them to your TV in a variety of ways.

You may end up wanting to pay more for better quality internet as long as you still save money over paying for more of a cable TV plan, but it depends on your provider.

We love Netflix. Currently, we can have 2 movies at any given time, and unlimited streaming movies/shows, for $13.99 per month. We watch about 8-10 movies via DVD per month, and lots of TV shows and movies via Netflix streaming. We've watched many full series of shows we had never watched before (hubby loves anime and sci-fi stuff, and we both love the BBC). Two great series which come to mind are The IT Crowd (BBC) and Party Down (STARZ).

It's SO worth the money.

A. The IT Crowd is freaking awesome.
B. Did you know that there's currently one new episode of IT Crowd and more to come in the regular season (whenever that is).

T-Mobile is based in the Seattle area, so the prospect of thousands of educated corporate employees suddenly streaming into the local unemployment market does not thrill me or a couple of my laid off friends. This could also be disastrous for one of my company's local partners, which is T-Mobile's ad agency.

I have a feeling the T-Mobile brand might go away, but that it would be replaced by the Deutsche Telekom brand. Deutsche/TMobile has a GSM network, which Verizon and Sprint don't have. It makes them part of a global network, not a proprietary U.S. one.