Netflix continues its domination of the video streaming market by partnering with Sony to bring its service to the PS3. The two companies announced Monday that Netflix's "thousands" of movies and TV shows will be streamable to the PS3 as of November 2009, and at no extra cost to Netflix members. Though the implementation is a little less than ideal, the partnership will solidify Netflix's spot as the go-to service for on-demand streaming.

The arrangement is "less than ideal" because PS3 users will have to insert an "instant streaming disc" into their consoles before they can take advantage of Netflix's streaming content. The disc uses BD-Live, which allows Blu-ray discs to pull down content from the Internet—basically, the Netflix player won't be native on the PS3 operating system, but will run within the device's Blu-ray player software.

It doesn't take a genius to observe that this is noticeably less polished than Netflix's implementation on the Xbox, for example—content can be accessed through an Xbox dashboard application without the need to insert a disc or do anything that involves getting up out of that comfy dent in the couch.

As pointed out by Zatz Not Funny, this was probably to get the solution to market as soon as humanly possible, but may also have been chosen in order to avoid making Sony too much as a middleman. Either way, having to an insert a disc means one extra step that will take this feature from "welcome" to "slightly irksome."

This may not be the case forever, though. The two companies predicated the news by saying that this would only be the case "initially," indicating that the PS3 might still get native Netflix streaming sometime in the future. Indeed, this appears to be the case after we spoke with Netflix spokesperson Chris Garrity.

"Netflix members and PS3 owners have really wanted a way to instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system. The instant streaming disc represented the fastest and easiest way to let them so this," Garrity told Ars. "Late next year we expect to have an embedded solution available for PS3s via a system software update slated for release through the PlayStation Network."

The move is not only meant to make PS3 fanboys happy, though—Netflix is also trying stay a step ahead of the competition. With online video giant Hulu considering charging for content—possibly on a subscription basis like Netflix—it's possible that the two companies could be competing more directly in the near future. Netflix certainly has a distribution advantage, though, with its streaming content going to numerous set-top boxes already (Xbox, TiVo, Roku, and now PS3), while Hulu has repeatedly tried to shut out non-computer browsing from consoles and media centers.