Download 'Watch Now' Movies from Netflix

Netflix, an online movie rentals company, is offering a so called 'Watch Now' service since the beginning of 2007 which allows subscribed users to watch streaming movies. This offer lets you watch x hours of movies where x is the amount that you pay in dollars for your monthly subscription.

The movies require a Windows operating system, Internet Explorer 6 or higher and Windows Media Player 11. An experienced user would have already guessed it that there is some sort of DRM involved in this setup and indeed it is. There is no obvious way to download the movies or watch them in your favorite movie player.

All you need to change this is the drm stripper fairuse4wm and a text editor according to DIzzIE from the rorta forum.

Step by Step guide:

• Go to Netflix.com/watchnow and choose a movie to watch
• Click on play, if netflix wants to install the Netflix Movie Installer do that
• WMP should tell you that you do not have the rights to view that movie, hit NO
• Open the source of the website
• Search for 'WNPlaylistMovies' in that file, the result should begin with ar WNPlaylistMovies =
• There should be several entries each with a different bandwidth, select one.
• Copy the url that starts with ehub and paste it in a blank new text file, e.g. (http://index.ehub.netflix.com/item/?x=sdjkdsjH)
• Create a html link from it, use this template: name and save it as movie.html
• Now open the html file in your browser and right-click the link and save it. This will download the movie which is usually between 1-2 Gigabytes. It is however still DRM infested.
• Double-click the downloaded file and click Yes when it asks to connect to the website to acquire the license
• Launch FairUse4WM after you clicked Yes and wait until you see that the Play button becomes active in WMP. Click on Recover Keys. It should find some, hit ok and answer the next question with Yes.
• Timing is crucial here. You do get an FairUse4WM error sometimes, just try again then.
• If everything went fine FairUse4WM rips the DRM out of the file and saves a new copy without DRM which you can watch in any video player that you want.

Update: It is unlikely that this method is still working. Netflix is now offering digital streaming subscriptions that allow users to stream unlimited media to their systems. The service is still locked to a select few countries in the world including the US, Norway and the UK.

Programs like Audials may still allow you to record Netflix video streams.