They may have retooled enough to become efficient at repairing red ringed Xbox 360 consoles, but boy do they suck at general support. A week or two ago my 360 stopped being able to play NetFlix video over HDMI, stating that a “secure HDCP link could not be found.” Contacting NetFlix has been resourceful in the past, so I did this with no luck. After explaining I was in a preview program for the new dashboard, they redirected me to Microsoft. So that is where I went! I didn’t feel like calling them and waiting on hold for hours and hours and thus emailed them. Here is the response I just received.

Hello John,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft online support for XBOX. I am XXXXXXXXX and I will be helping you today with this issue.

As I understand it, when you use an HDMI cable to connect your Xbox 360 to your HDTV or monitor, you experience one of the following display issues:
. A green or purple tint to the video
. Extensive flickering for more than several seconds when you play video, use the Xbox Guide, or switch from the Dashboard to a movie
. Image “ghosting”

I know how disappointing it is that the cable you’re using is not working properly. Please be assured that I will do my best to help you resolve the issue.

Wow. So problems with this response? Well it doesn’t actually restate my problem but attempts to and fails miserably. I also love how they immediately blame the cable, as if that was the problem here. The email then goes on to suggest connecting to live to obtain automatic updates, unplugging my HDMI and plugging it back in as well as adjusting my HDTV settings to obtain “optimal resolution.”

Fortunately NetFlix did something internally because a day or two later the problem resolved itself. It turns out that some videos aren’t allowed to be streamed to the Xbox 360 and I just happened to be trying to play some of them. Movies that had stopped working that were working started working again like magic. And they thought it was my cable…. ha! Cables don’t just break, hardware that is known to go bad does.

How does NetFlix on the 360 work exactly? Ok, so when you sign up on NetFlix, you get access to the gigantic vault of movies and TV shows they have built up. Each piece of media on the site can be one of a few things: an instant play, a DVD, or both. It is important to know that the instant collection is nowhere near the girth of the DVD collection.

On the NetFlix site you will have two lists, your Instant Queue and your Standard Queue. In the Standard Queue goes movies you want to obtain through the mail on DVD. The Instant Queue is what you will be able to see on your Xbox 360. Perhaps they will change this in the future but you can only see what is on the Instant Queue.

Why is it important to know this? Because the instant collection rarely contains newer movies. You will usually not be able to get a movie on instant until a few months after its DVD release if not a few years.

Furthermore, if you plan on playing NetFlix over HDMI be sure you have a compliant monitor or TV because DRM will be used. Currently I am having a lot of problems getting it to work on my Dell 2408 even after it worked 2 weeks ago. Hopefully it is fixed by NXE launch.