Netflix has rolled out support for Chromebooks, which are laptops running Google’s Chrome OS software. If you’re in the US or Canada, you can now stream TV shows and movies from Netflix using a Samsung Series 5, Acer AC700, or Google Cr-48 notebook.
The company had promised that its Watch Instantly video streaming service would be available for Chromebooks earlier this year, but the first Chrome OS laptops have been available for a few months without Netflix support.
There’s also now a Netflix app in the Chrome Web Store, which means you can also “install” Netflix using the Chrome web browser on a Mac or Windows computer. Essentially that just means you’ve added a bookmark to the Netflix website to your list of Apps though, because there’s really no difference between what you see when using the web app and what you see when you visit the Netflix homepage.
Unfortunately Netflix doesn’t yet stream videos outside of North America and the service doesn’t yet work with Linux — although Linux support is in the works.
Linux support in the works… sure it is. I have one of the first Chromebook Samsung series 5 models and it will not work on either they’re so called “Chrome App” a.k.a bookmark or accessing they’re domain directly. Netflix fix it as you are one of the top app reasons advertised by Google to get a Chromebook!
at least a chromebook VM is less work than a windows one
I’m surprised that Netflix works on Chromebooks, but not on Linux. Â I thought ChromeOS was just the Linux kernel with a browser and add-ons as userspace. Â Seems like the package for Netflix on ChromeOS should work equally well on a Linux distro with similar settings.Â
FYI, Netflix has been streaming (only — no DVDs) in Canada since Fall 2010.