Netflix Added to Windows Media Center

Microsoft has announced a deal with Netflix to integrate the rental/streaming video services in the Media Center interface. Available only to Windows Vista (and applicable sub-versions) via an update that’s available today. XP and Windows Media Extenders won’t benefit from this at the moment, and won’t be able to stream movies from a Vista machine. This is said to be an artificial limitation so that Xbox 360 is the only Netflix friendly Windows Media Center Extender (that’s shooting Media Center to help Xbox… awful)

From the screenshots, the Netflix for Media Center seems nice, although we’ll try it later today and confirm (or not) this information. If you wonder, on-demand viewing is also available and it will hopefully be better than its flash-equivalent, available via non-Microsoft media center plugins.