Finally one of the most common complaints about the Playstation 3 – the lack of support for playing Netflix movies instantly over the Internet – was fixed. Let’s take an in-depth look at this marriage.

Netflix is – if you’ve been in a coma for the past few years – an on-line movie rental store with thousands of movies available where you create your own list of movies you want to watch. Then they ship you the movies (on DVD or Blu-Ray, if you select that you have a Blu-Ray player on your account) on the same order that is found on your list. Then after watching them you send them back on a prepaid envelope. The number of discs you can have at home (or in transit) at the same time will depend on the plan you sign for.

Another option they offer is watching selected movies instantly from your computer or from any Netflix-ready device, like a box or a Blu-Ray player that is compatible with their system.

The huge success of Playstation 3 is due to the fact that it isn’t only a videogame console, but also a media player capable of playing Blu-Ray discs, DVDs, CDs, movies from computer-generated files, pictures and more, also featuring an Internet browser. But until this week it couldn’t play movies from Netflix.

If you have a Playstation 3 and want to play movies from Netflix all you will have to do is to order a DVD containing the software from Netflix at http://www.netflix.com/PS3, which will be delivered for free to you (it won’t be counted against your disc limit and you don’t need to return it). Of course you will need to have a Netflix account and also an Internet connection hooked up on your Playstation 3.

The disc must be inserted on the Playstation 3 whenever you want to watch a movie from Netflix.

After receiving the disc and inserting it on your PS3 for the first time, it will present you a device ID for your console and a URL (which is the same printed above) that you need to open to register your PS3 with Netflix. This registration must be done through an Internet Browser, so you have to do this either from your computer or exiting the DVD and opening the PS3 integrated web browser.

After the registration is complete (it can take a few minutes for your PS3 to be recognized by Netflix) your PS3 will display a Netflix menu whenever you play the Netflix DVD. On next page we will review in details this interface.