Amazon Video

If you're a linux user and a Netflix user frustrated by Netflix refusal to release a player compatible w/ linux, look into Amazon's offering - so far the unlimited watch (with a prime account) show selection is somewhat limited when compared to netflix's catalog, but what is available works perfectly... Much better than Netflix running in a windows virtualbox in my experience...

Netflix freezing on Virtualbox? Try different DNS settings...

Looking for a way to run "Watch Instantly" on my linux box (since I hated having to reboot into Windows just to watch a show, I virtualized my Win 7 installation using vmware's standalone converter.  I was never able to try running this virtualized windows on vmware server, due I think to issues with 64 bit firefox not being able to install vmware's plugin - no worries, I created a virtualbox VM booting off of the converted virtual drive, et viola - I could watch Netflix... kinda.


Problem was, that Netflix would lock up within seconds or minutes, halting all playback.  Reloading the page would start the video again (not exactly where I left off - usually back a bit) but it basically rendered netflix unusable... not cool. I tried reinstalling Silverlight, and a few tweaks to the VM configuration, but to no avail... further googling indicated that perhaps DNS settings could lead to lock ups like I was seeing (though that makes no sense to me).  I set Ubuntu to use Google's dns servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and amazingly, this seems to have fixed my problems - at least for today.  I'll update here if this setup starts to fail...