I love movies and the internet so of course I’m going to be a big fan of Netflix. I love that its popularity continues to grow as more people learn how great it is. I had the same feeling or Tivo when I discovered it and was blown away by how fantastic and life changing it was. The fact that they eventually became partners is just incredible. You’ll see why later.
Here are some little known things about your netflix account as well as some excellent websites and apps that can add tremendous value to the experience.
Netflix RSS feeds displays all kinds of useful RSS feeds about your Netflix account as well as all of the useful RSS feeds that Netflix provides.
Netflix Facebook Connection makes it easy for you to share your Netflix and movie activities with your friends on Facebook with the click of a button.
The Netflix community is an ever growing online social network for Netflix and movie lovers. It’s built within the Ning network so if you already have a ning account you can just sign in to join the Netflix community. Once you’re in, you can add friends, chat, share thoughts, etc.
Twitter for Netflix allows you to manage your Netflix account via Twitter.
Netflix App Gallery
Netflix has an excellent App Gallery of websites and applications for desktops and mobile devices that work with their service. Here are just some of my favorites.
Feedfliks provides tremendous amounts of information and statistics about your Netflix account.
InstantWatcher is one of my favorite sites, period. It gives a wonderful at-a-glance view of all the movies you can watch instantly on Netflix. No muss, no fuss, bada bing, bada boom!
DVD Corral is a fantastic visual way to catalog the movie collection as well as the movies you want to own online.
It connects to Netflix wonderfully so you can actually watch it online if it’s available or you can add it to your queue to be delivered. You can import/export lists which is excellent.
I like that it provides a couple of handy URLs that you can share with friends such as your movie collection:
http://www.dvdcorral.com/users/paisano
as well as the movies you want to watch or own:
http://www.dvdcorral.com/users/paisano/wish
Qflip is just a silly way to let others movies for you.
iPhone apps for Netflix
Now Playing 2 is an amazing app that does to much to cover here really. In short, it not only tells you which movies are playing near you and when but it also lets you buy the tickets and pops the popcorn (OK I added that last part but you get the gist). They’re included here because they also work with Netflix! You can access your account from your iPhone and manage you queue and other things. Best of all, it’s totally FREE!
i.TV does a great job working with your local TV channel guides. It also has a Netflix connection allowing you to manage your DVD and instant watch queues.
Mobi iNet and Mobi iNet Lite offer access to a boatload of services including Netflix but truth be told, the interface for Netflix isn’t nearly as good as the other apps here. Still, it appears to be a worthy app for all that it offers.
Netflix on Tivo
The ultimate one-two punch has to be Netflix on Tivo which allows you to watch any streaming movie from Netflix on your big screen TV thanks to the Tivo box. Here’s the Tivo HD device with Netflix access.
Final Thoughts
Netflix continues to grow in popularity as it forms new partnerships with other services such as Tivo which only adds value to its service and members. Another trend that I like seeing is the Add to Netflix button popping on in movie reviews such as this one on the New York Times for Little Miss Sunshine. If you love movies then Netflix appears to be a must have service, especially with all of these apps and services that work with your account.
