The Netflix streaming service integration has been far and away the more meaningfully kick-ass feature introduced in the New Xbox Experience. I've been a loyal Netflix customer for a good six years running, and I'm a fan of the service, though until now streaming movies and TV shows to my PC has been an occasional novelty at best. I appreciated the gesture of Netflix adding the streaming service at no additional cost, but hunkering over a laptop to watch Clue isn't the greatest user experience. Being able to access all that content through my Xbox 360 was a game-changer.
The ability to watch full seasons of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits without leaving the couch has had an awesomely detrimental effect on my evenings, though there are some issues. Aside from more “HD” content, what I'd really like is the ability to add and remove items from my streaming queue directly through the Xbox 360. Apparently I'm not the only one, as MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totilo brought up the issue of direct queue management with Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg during a recent conference call. Greenberg acknowledged that it's an issue they've heard from users, and that they're looking into ways to address it.
What the Netflix guys will tell you that queue management is meant to be on the PC, where you can search a lot of content and see reviews. On the Xbox 360, the idea was this was supposed to be a viewing experience. That’s the way we designed it… We’ve heard the feedback ands I think the team will look at what the options.Actually, you know what would be even better? Ditching the whole queue concept altogether. It makes sense for Netflix's disc-based business, where you can only have a few discs in your possession at a time, but it doesn't seem like the most intuitive way to present a streaming library that you have unlimited access to. The new dashboard is far better about presenting large lists of data than the old one was, why not apply some of that UI savvy here?