Wait! Netflix On PS3 Isn’t Actually Netflix On PS3?

I’ll qualify this post with a disclaimer: I can’t guarantee the following information is correct. However, I will say that this morning’s rather excitable post about the PS3 getting Netflix warrants further investigation. Thus, I’ve since read that the service isn’t actually Netflix on PS3, it’s merely “Netflix on Blu-ray”, and thus will, in theory, work with any internet enabled Blu-ray device. Let me explain:

The disk that our American cousins will be getting won’t be to install software onto your PS3′s XMB, and won’t be replaced with a firmware update any time soon. Why? Because the Netflix disk is a Blu-ray movie, and once playing the PS3 (or indeed, any Blu-ray player) will be able to then connect to the Netflix server via the magic of BD-Live, and then stream your required movie that way.

There’s also no talk of bit-rate or resolutions, which gives further weight to the notion that this will just be BD-Live streaming, rather than an XMB-based 1080p solution.  Does this make the service any less important for Sony?  Possibly, possibly not – whether you’re bothered or not will depend on how integrated a service you wanted Netflix to be on the PlayStation 3.  Again, this is just speculation…