Netflix Software and Tools
As Netflix closes in on 10 million subscribers, a flood of software is being designed by 3rd parties looking to make your experience more satisfying. They offer features not currently found in the Netflix member's area that makes it easier to organize your movie selections. We've taken the liberty to list them and give our brief analysis.
Netflix Freak(Mac OS X)
Arguably the most complete Netflix software for the Mac OS X, Netflix Freak provides a speedy way to manage your rental queue and avoid the slow website. Options such as shuffling your queue, one-click adding of movies to the top of your queue, and a slew of others that are not available in your member's area. You can easily look up movies on Google, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Amazon with this application. For diehard Netflix fans who happen to be Mac owners, this is a fantastic application that is worth the relatively low cost.
Cost: Unrestricted 30-day free trial; licensed copy for $15
MyNetflix (Vista)
This is a very cool Vista Media Center plugin. The application is full-featured and allows you to manage your queue, search films, and watch movies instantly on your computer. If you have a Vista system and are a Netflix subscriber, this comes highly recommended.
iNeedFlix (Mac OS X)
This is a basic queue management tool for the Mac. This program requires users to be logged into their Netflix account via their Safari browser. Not nearly as sophisticated as Netflix Freak, but a decent start which will work for some looking to go the free route.
Cost: Free
myFlixer (Windows)
This is a simple application that lets you keep track of your Netflix movie queue directly on your desktop. It hides quietly in your taskbar and updates everytime a change occurs in your account. You can view the DVDs in your queue as well as recent returns. The movies come complete with box art and a description.
Cost: Free
FlixQueue (Windows)
Created by Syphen Studios, Inc., this application is a queue manager with much more. Queue managing features include drag ‘n drop reordering, 1 button clicking, and the ability to backup your queue at anytime. Advanced sorting and assigning priorities to titles make this a fairly complete manager. FlixQueue also offers cost to rent statistics, estimated ship dates for your entire queue, and easy lookup of movies on sites such as Amazon, IMDB, and Ebay.
Cost: Free, although donations are appreciated
Netflixter (Windows)
This program allows you to manage your account faster than the web interface at Netflix.com. They offer drag and drop sorting that makes organizing your queue much easier. An ability to sort movies by title, genre, star rating, MPAA rating, and availability is a plus. There is easy one-click linking to IMDB as well as an option to buy DVDs directly through Amazon. The best feature is the rental history that is tracked. It allows you to determine when the best days are to return movies as well as determining if your account is being throttled. You can also chart out the number of movies you're getting on a monthly basis to determine if your plan is worth it or not.
Our only gripe with this software is the price. While it's free to try, the price tag is $24.95 to keep. The program and site have not been updated in over a year which leads us to believe that updates are not in the works.
Cost: Free to Try; $24.95 to Buy
We will continue to update this page as we come across new applications that can be used in conjunction with Netflix. If you have any that you'd like to recommend, please use our contact form.