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Netflix Gets More Personal

Netflix recently started integrating Facebook Connect into its site, allowing the service to get more social with people sharing movie ratings, and things of that nature. Now Netflix has announced some changes to its site in general that will give it a more personalized feeling all around.

Netflix Looks to Facebook Connect to Engage Users

Netflix announced today that it is integrating with Facebook Connect. Users now have the option to post movies they've rated in their Facebook profiles. "Movies make for great conversations," says Netflix vice president of product management Gibson Biddle. "By integrating with Facebook Connect, Netflix members can now share their movie-watching experiences even more easily than before, allowing for greater exchange of movie recommendations with their friends."

Netflix Opening Up Access

Netflix, the movie rental service that recently hit a milestone of 10 million subscribers is now making deals with movie sites to give users quick access to their Netflix queues from these places.

Netflix Reaches More Than 10 Million Subscribers

Netflix said today its online movie rental service has reached over 10 million subscribers, reflecting its widespread and growing popularity among movie fans. The company says it has added more than 600,000 net subscribers since January 1. It surpassed nine million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008 and ended the year with 9.4 million subscribers.

1 Million Xbox Members Use Netflix

Microsoft and Netflix announced today that 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold members have activated Netflix's movie streaming service since the two companies formed a partnership last November. Since that time Xbox users have watched 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV episodes via Netflix's Watch Instantly service.

LG TVs To Directly Stream Netflix Content

LG Electronics has partnered with Netflix to introduce broadband-enabled HDTVs that will allow content to be streamed directly from the Internet without a set-top box.LG says the new LCD and plasma HDTVs will be available this spring and will offer access to about 12,000 movies and TV episodes from Netflix.

The Year in Online Video

Now that we are in December, the final month of the year, I thought it would be fun to go back through our archives and take a look at some of the highlights of different sectors of our industry, and reflect on everything that has happened over the year 2008. January seems so long ago. So much has happened.

Hulu Adds More User Experience Enhancing Features

Hulu introduced a couple of new features today to enhance the user experience. This comes only a week or so after the site launched other features to improve its search functionality. The first new feature is a recommendation section for users with accounts. To get Hulu's personalized recommendations, simply login and go to your profile page and you will find a new tab for this area.

Blockbuster Launches New Set-Top Box

Blockbuster is introducing its own set-top box, which will bring movies directly to a user's TV and provide access to on demand content.The MediaPoint digital media player by broadband device maker 2Wire is available to Blockbuster customers for $99 and includes 25 movies. After the initial 25 rentals, movies are available for $1.99 each to $3.99.

What Home Entertainment Technology Will Win?

There has been a lot of new news lately around the idea of home entertainment and media and I wanted to write a post reflecting on recent announcements coming out of Microsoft on their Media Center platform in Windows 7, the new XBox 360, an increasing role for Netflix's "watch now" technology and today's announcement regarding Netflix by TiVo.