Netflix sent a survey to some of their customers asking if they would be willing to pay an extra $9.99 per month to stream HBO shows through Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature.

The shows listed in the survey are:

• Big Love
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
• Flight of the Concords
• Eastbound & Down
• Entourage
• Summer Heights High
• In Treatment
• Little Britain USA
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• The Life & Times of Tim
• Sex and the City
• The Sopranos
• The Wire
• Def Comedy Jam
• Rome
• Deadwood
• Extras
• Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry
• Six Feet Under
• Da Ali G Show

I personally wouldn’t pay an extra $10 to watch any of the shows above, not just because I’m not interested in any of those shows, but also because I don’t stream over Netflix that often. In the entire time that Netflix streaming has been available I’ve only watched one movie with it. I just don’t really enjoy sitting in front of my computer watching long form content and I’m also not willing to pay $100 or more for a device with Netflix streaming built in.

But, this idea got me thinking that Netflix could become the premier IPTV service. If they could charge you an extra $30-50 would you pay to be able to stream practically all of the content that is available to you from your cable company? Although the quality might not be as good it is an on demand service in which you pick what you want to see in your “channel linup” (or your queue in Netflix’s instance). I’ve talked before about the IPTV Dream in which you could order service from anyone in the world and since the delivery mechanism is there (your internet access) it didn’t matter your physical location or you IPTV providers location you could order from whoever you wanted. I just wonder if Netflix is heading towards that goal, towards that dream of a huge selection of media where there is something for everyone and for one low price you can watch as much as you like.

I leave you with two questions to ponder (or comment below about).

Would you pay $9.99 for HBO content?
and
Do you think Netflix will be the Vonage of IPTV?

Hacking NetFlix : Netflix Survey: Would You Pay an Additional $9.99 Per Month for HBO Shows?.

And have fun with Joost, I just can’t wait for the new content.

Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, Transformers, and GI Joe are just some of the programming that will be added from these content owners.

Joost is getting ready to launch and right now has given out a bunch of invites for its beta testers to give out (I only have 5 and know 5 people who want them sorry guys It is now telling me I have 999 so let me know if you want one). I’ve heard that many beta testers have unlimited invites, I only have 5 now I have 999 so if you want one let me know(go here if you want one).

The new content providers should begin showing up this month and Joost is probably just about as far away from opening to the public but for now if you want an invite, ask all your friends or look around the blogs.

The winners are:

Forest Jones
Victor
Empty Head

If you are listed here then you already should have gotten your invite in email. If you didn’t give me an email at comments@cybersurge.org

All you have to do is leave a comment on the site with a relevant point and you’ll be entered.

The winners will be announced tomorrow. Have fun commenting and then maybe you’ll have fun with Joost.

I’m going to put all the names in a hat and draw 3 of them, whoever is picked gets one. Its quite exciting. To see all the rules check here.

I’ve still been having fun with Joost as usual but I wish they would bring out some new contenet because it is getting boring, nothing interesting on it lately I’ve watched all the cool TV shows. Lately I’ve been watching old Mr. Magoo cartoons! Hopefully the CBS content will be coming out soon.

Update: Pushing the end of the contest to Monday at Noon EST, and announcing the names of the winners on tuesday. I thought I would give all of you a little bit more time to comment.

I’m going to do this contest a little bit like the other one except comments on this post won’t count at all and I will not allow comments on this post.

To get one of my 3 Joost invites all you have to do is make a comment on another post on this site, it has to be on topic though so I don’t want any “I want one.” comments talk a little bit more, I want to know what you think about some of the stuff talked about on here.

Don’t put your email in the actual comment I can see your email when you put it in the email box, no one else can, that will help keep your spam down.

The contest will end on Saturday at midnight EST Monday at Noon EST and will be announced Monday Tuesday but if you won then you should know by then anyways.

Lets get this started.

Update: Pushing the end of the contest to Monday at Noon EST, and announcing the names of the winners on tuesday. I thought I would give all of you a little bit more time to comment.

Update: The contest is over and will be announced tomorrow

Update: I’ve added the YouTube video of it at the bottom, it is the commercial in its full glory, not the commercial taken with a video camera pointed at a TV.

I’m going to put all the names in a hat and draw 4 of them, whoever is picked gets one. Its quite exciting. To see all the rules check here.

I’ve still been having fun with Joost as usual but I wish they would bring out some new contenet because it is getting boring, nothing interesting on it lately I’ve watched all the cool TV shows. Lately I’ve been watching old Mr. Magoo cartoons!

Comments on this post will not count, but feel free to comment here as well if you want to.

I do delete comments that are not relevant so just add to the blog with a comment and try to win one.

I’m not sure when the contest will be closed but I think that Wednesday April 11th will be the cut off date.

Don’t hesitate and start commenting.

Update: I decided to count comments on this post, I don’t think it would be fair to count this one out.

Update: Just put your email in the required email box not in the main comment box. This way I will see it incase you win but you don’t have to show it to the whole world. Also if you already have a Joost account please mention it in the comment so that those who don’t have it can have a better chance, there is no need for anyone to get two invites.

Update: The contest is officially over and we have winners they are:
Pavan
Cameron
Alexandre
Daniele

Update: I have 3 more, find out how to win one here.

I spent the first hour of Joost recording some information about it, such as how much data Joost uploads and downloads. I also found out how many commercials I saw during an hour period. The next few hours of Joost were spent finding out two things, how solid the program is (it is still beta) and if there is enough content to substitute cable for a lenghty period of time.

(Sorry About the Blurry Table)

As you can see it downloaded a total of 508 MB of data and uploaded 44 MB. If you have a cap on your download or upload for the month with your ISP Joost is not a program for you. I only saw 8 commercials for the first hour. Only a couple of things bothered me about them, they were significantly louder then the rest of the programing and they are the same commercials. Over that hour I only saw 3 different commercials so They get pretty boring.

The program itself is extremely polished and works very well. I love the interface and one of the things I liked about it was with my Media Center remote I could control the channels so I wouldn’t need a mouse or keyboard to flip around. I didn’t find the widgets interesting at all but I think with time as soon as users will be able to create their own widgets and distribute them they will become more and more useful.

There is a lot of programing but not a whole lot of it is really that good. I spent a lot of time watching Rocky and Bullwinkle and the Lime channel which has some cool cooking shows on it. Joost does have a channel catalog which will show you what is popular and what is new at that time which I found very useful to find new and interesting shows to watch. A problem that I found is that under the My Channels list it doesn’t list all of the available channels because looking in the channel catalog I found 3 or 4 channels that weren’t listed in the “My Channels” list. I think it would be much better for them to show me all of the channels and then give me the option of removing ones I don’t watch very often.

I didn’t get bored watching any of the shows but I do think that Joost needs to try and get more content on the service quicker so that you don’t end up watching all the shows that you like and then being left with two options, rewatching shows you already watched or watching things that don’t really interest you.

All in all Joost is a great program and couple it with Netflix or iTunes can get you by if you are on a tight budget and don’t really want to throw down the cash for Cable service but you need to be very careful about how much data the program downloads if you have a download cap you will hit it very quickly.

Check back on Thursday for the article. But, for my first impressions, It looks pretty good on my TV and I rarely see buffering of the video and that has only happened when I was using my other computer with some heavy network activity. I can’t wait for new channels and video content because it doesn’t seem like there is too much to watch.

Like I said earlier I don’t have any invites but if I get any I’ll let you all know.

“This is just to let you know that we haven’t forgotten your request to try Joost. We’re now speeding up the process of adding testers and we’ll shortly be inviting everyone who has signed up to try Joost.

This includes you, so expect an invite within the next couple of weeks – in the meantime, thanks for bearing with us – we appreciate it.

See you soon on Joost!

The Joost Team”

This is great, I have wanted to try Joost back when it was called the Venice project. Now everyone who has requested to try Joost will be able too. Not for another couple of weeks of course however we will be able to try it soon.

I think Joost is a great idea but I do hope that when it launches it won’t be a paid service because I don’t have cable and I don’t really want to pay for TV, the way I look at it, make a advertisement based busniess model and get more eyeballs instead of charging $60 a month for television.

One of the coolest things that I’d like to point out about IPTV is that by its very nature its over the Internet. Many people don’t think about it but this will open up the ties to your local cable company. You will no longer have to live near the company you get your television from. With it over the Internet all you need is a fairly fast Internet connection and then you can look all over the Internet for a service that is cheap and that you would like no matter where they are, as long as you can have a fast enough connection to them you are good to go. Very similar to Vonage where you can have Vonage anywhere in the country as long as you have a decent connection.

I could get myself a broadband Internet connection then find any service provider that I think is worthy my money, then I could call them and they would send me the device I need, I hook it up to my Internet connection and my TV then I’m set.

This is a dream that you would make the world better and everyone would be happy that Direct TV and their local cable provider weren’t their only choices for television service.