Netflix delivered on its promise and its Watch Instantly service is now also available for all Mac users that have a subscription to the company’s service and a system that can play the content in Microsoft’s Silverlight Web plugin.

The company announced on its blog page that the first phase of beta testing for the new service is now complet and all subscribers interested in it should opt in. Still, Netflix included some warnings for the potential new users, as there might still be bugs and as soon as these flaws will be reported the company’s engineers will begin working on the fixes. Also, there are certain movies that are not viewable through Silverlight, leading to certain errors and a lower than normal quality for those titles and the last warning is that Silverlight will have to be used on all the machines that subscribers will use for the service.

Netflix explained that users will come across a "faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight," which among other features provides an enhanced timeline navigation that improves the fast-forward and rewind actions. The new player uses Silverlight’s built-in Play Ready DRM, that is used for the playback of protected content on Windows-based PCs and also on Macs. The company stated that such a service has not been possible with any of the previous technologies.

In order to get more subscribers interested in the new offer, the company announced that it recently expanded the number of movies and TV programs available on Watch Instantly. Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go before closing in on its massive DVD selection, which holds more than 100,000 titles. The blog post ends with this invitation: “Once you get up and running check out some of our newest content. We recently added a lot more movies, as well as recent episodes of many TV shows including Heroes, CSI and NCIS. You’ll find all these movies & TV episodes under the Watch Instantly tab of the website.”

Netflix’s efforts to take over the treaming content market have been significant over the past year, with the company’s content already available on PCs and Roku set-top boxes used for television playback. Upcoming plans include a HD version of Watch Instantly for TiVo, Xbox 360 and also Roku. The final release is expected sometime by the end of the year and the above mentioned flaws should no longer be an issue. The company put a lot of effort into this campaign and the end result is expected to be extremely good.

The company, established in 1997, is best known for the mail-order DVD rental service, which was received with great enthusiasm by many movie fans. At this point it registers approximately 8 million subscribers and last year on February 25, Netflix announced its billionth DVD delivery. The company managed to top the ForeSee Results’ Top 100 Retail Satisfaction Index with an American Customer Satisfaction Index score of 86.