Longtime Netflix users will recall that as a primarily DVD-by-mail company it had previously offered individual profiles, but company executives cited its low adoption rate as something they wanted to avoid this time around. Much more than any technical issues or allowing for multiplatform support, making sure the process for setting up and using profiles is as simple as possible has kept this feature baking for so long. In its use, that drive for ease of use affects how it works in a number of ways, enabling it is as easy as clicking a large plus sign and typing in each person's name and selecting a persona logo. Each profile can link to a different Facebook account if you like, however be advised that it automatically pulls in your profile pic for the avatar. As far as setup, that's it. It's like having a brand new account otherwise, with the opportunity to seed preferred content and ratings just like any other new user.

From the master account settings and profiles page you can tailor each one for things like age, or even parental suggestions, although a true lockdown this isn't. There are no passwords or other hurdles separating the leap from one profile to another, which the team compared to "locking all the doors in your house." Other settings like preferences for language, closed captions, bandwidth and of course Netflix's taste suggestions are all individual for each profile.

This is more about keeping each person's suggestions and any social network tie-ins separate than anything else, and for that it works perfectly in our testing. We're still waiting to try it out on devices other than the PC, but based on our earlier demos we expect a process even more streamlined than the old Kids Zone prompt. We'd like to see even more control in the future, with toggles for locking different playback devices to certain profiles or age-gated content, and the ability to disable the extra step of profile switching at will. For now, profiles are a welcome -- if seemingly late-arriving -- addition, let us know when they hit your account and how they're working out for you.