Which is a real pisser, but it's because they went with Microsoft's "Silverlight" player technology, with Microsoft's built-in copy protection, which only runs on Windows. I'm pretty sure Mac users get boned too. There's this whole cult of people building Linux media centers that is mightily pissed at Netflix. Netflix could give a rat's ass.

I went with Amazon's service, which you get with a Prime membership, which is actually about free shipping with streaming video thrown in...but I'll wag that dog. Yearly fee averages out to about $7/month. I don't know if Netflix lets you purchase and download videos, but Amazon does, so in most cases I have a choice between online viewing of the lower-rez (480) streaming version for gratis as part of Prime, or I can pay $2 to download that rez or $3 to download the "HD" version (1280x720) of TV shows; and movie purchases are on a par with DVDs, approx $10. A select few items, most notably Torchwood, I can stream online at "HD", though I can't store a copy locally.

Some items on Amazon you have to pay for even with a membership, but I've found that I can usually find TV shows for free out there somewhere. Either hulu.com (or xfinity, which uses hulu), or I can go directly to a show's Web site. I watch the Daily Show each night streamed direct from their Web site. It pays to comparison shop: The version on the Web site is higher quality than the one streamed through hulu/xfinity.

Wow, lots of info to impart, now that I'm talking about it. Should I start a thread on Geek?