Ok, if you have no idea what I'm talking about here....

1. Microsoft produces the in-home gaming and entertainment console, the xBox 360.

2. NetFlix offers a mail-based exchange for renting out DVD's. You have a monthly subscription of say 3 movies. You can have 3 DVDs at your home at any given time. No late fees, etc. You mail one back in, they send you another off of your list or "queue".

Now that we've got that out of the way...

Netflix has been offering the ability to "stream" many of their movies directly to your computer so that way you can watch it immediately on your computer screen.

Microsoft will be releasing a pretty hefty software update to the xBox 360 this coming fall. In this update will be a new module that connects to your Netflix account. However, to take advantage of this you'll need a gold account with xBox Live. Gold accounts will cost you something like $50 for 12 months.

What this update will enable you to do is watch instanly any of the movies that are available on Netflix for instant streaming through xBox 360. So you can watch it like anything else on your TV just as you would a normal DVD with the pause, play, ff, and rewind.

With these types of technologies coming out do you think this is a sign of the end for things like pay per view movies? I seldom watch pay-per-view movies. It appears to me that the only incentive for PPV movies are that they are made available before they come out on DVD.

What do you think?