On Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” Streaming Feature

I just watched my first Netflix streaming movie. It was “Species”, for the record — I picked it because it was the first one presented I hadn’t seen that I had a vague interest in.

Species itself was mildly interesting, but I was more curious about the experience. I found the Silverlight client for Firefox 3.5 to work extremely well. The movie stopped in the middle with a “can’t stream this right now” message. I clicked refresh, and much to my delight, it not only reloaded the movie but kept my place!

This was light-years ahead of the experience I had watching a Comcast On-Demand movie a month ago, which I had to restart no less than ten times because of freezes.

Having done this makes me interested in other players in this space, as well as a set-top box. Any recommendations?