Pete, a friend-of-a-friend who lives in Philadelphia and works at Gamestop recently enlightened me to the fact that you can now use Netflix on the Xbox 360.  Let me tell you, its a brilliant collaboration on the part of Microsoft and Netflix.  You can download the Netflix app and link it to your Netflix account – and stream anything in your Instant Queue via your Xbox 360.  The process is absolutely painless and a free trial for Netflix is available which gives you 30 days of free rentals and streaming.  So many great movies and TV Series are available for instant streaming.  I started watching Heroes this way (yeah, I know I’m behind, just started season 1, but I was a little bit disinterested at first given the somewhat “dorky” stigma the show had initially).  A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, Alien and Aliens, and oh-so-many other great moview are available for instant gratification.  Pete also recommends Heavy Metal 2000 as great background visuals for good conversation, which I plan to use next time friends are over to chit-chat.

Bottom line, if you have an Xbox 360 and you haven’t tried Netflix on it, you’re seriously missing out. It definitely beats digital cable’s on-demand service.  If more stuff was available on Netflix for Instant Streaming, I’d be even happier.  Also, HD streaming works if you have enough bandwidth, and let me tell you, there’s nothing better than seeing something you want in HD over your Xbox 360 with virtually zero effort!

I recently started watching Heroes, streaming it through the Netflix app on my Xbox 360. Its an interesting show, but I think as far as dramatic stories of superhuman power go, its a little shallow in its symbology and the moral lessons it tries to teach.  If you’ve ever talked to me about “guilty pleasures”, I’m sure you’ve also heard my lectures about the finer points of balancing story and moral lessons in TV series.

Thats a post for another day though.  What brings me to the topic today is that I just read about Monday’s annular eclipse that’ll be visible for the folks that happen to live or just happen to be in the vicinity of the Indian ocean.  So there you go, good time to start watching the show if you’ve been thinking about picking it up – Netflix has the first three seasons available for Instant Streaming.  And if you’ve been meaning to read up on celestial mechanics, check out Wikipedia’s article about the Solar Eclipse phenomenon.