Netflix released an app for the iPhone on Thursday, making it possible to stream your instant queue on the smartphone and the iPod Touch and finally catching up to the iPad, on which the service was available from Day One.

We applauded TV Anywhere and now do so again for what might be called "DVD Anywhere" on these far-more-ubiquitous mobile devices.

What you lose in screen size on the iPad – and your computer and the plethora of devices through which you can stream Netflix movies – you gain in fantastic resolution on the retina display. Nothing in the viewing experience will seem out of the ordinary for those of us who routinely watch downloaded TV shows and movies on our smartphones – except this is streaming, even under 3G. No syncing or iTunes required.

Making the app backward-compatible was an expected move but momentous nonetheless, because the iPhone is (as smartphones go) very mainstream – much less exotic and in far more hands than the iPad. Getting the viewing public used to watching TV without a television set, and films without going to the movies (or turning on TV), makes it easier for consumers to dramatically change their habits by re-evaluating such things as cable or satellite subscriptions.

The Netflix app is actually an upgrade to the version released April 3 with the iPad. It makes good use of those relatively small screens surfacing the Instant Queue – where users line up the stuff they want to see next – as one of only four menu options. And at the very top of the screen sits a Resume button that lets you pick up where you left off, regardless of the device (other than your DVD player).

All of the content is browsable by category, genre and search – and, of course, all of Netflix's carefully constructed and crowdsourced recommendation algorithms help the service offer better recommendations the more you use it.

We watched a full-length film over the iPhone's 3G connection (Silent Running, if you must know). There were no hiccups – in the New York metropolitan area, to boot. Battery drain is about the same no matter what you are doing on the iPhone, though the connection type and screen brightness can affect battery life.

We seldom use the iPhone for 89 minutes straight, and in this case, lost about half our battery charge. Data consumption was about 420 MB, which means that those limited 3G data plans:

• $45 for 2 GB per month with tethering charge,

• $25 for 2 GB per month without tethering, or

• $15 for 200MB per month, also without tethering (the least-expensive option nowhere near enough to watch a single movie over 3G),

will start to look pretty chintzy.

So, what took so long for this to get done?

For one thing, Apple and AT&T almost certainly waited until AT&T stopped offering iPhones with those unlimited data plans in June (existing customers were able to keep their unlimited plans), before approving a Netflix app that could stream over 3G. The prospect of millions of iPhone owners streaming video for hours a day from an unlimited Netflix account was likely more than AT&T was willing to handle. Now that the iOS wireless-bandwidth caps are in place, AT&T considers the iPhone safe for streaming, as it already had for Slingbox and Skype (no video there yet).

That's not to say that these bandwidth caps ruin the point of a Netflix app – far from it. Subscribers can still stream as much as they want over Wi-Fi, but I was hoping this one would be capable of storing content on the iPhone's memory so that you could access it without a cellular data connection [update in note below].

Netflix subscribers accessing the service through Apple iOS devices will be able to select from the same video catalog available to users on other supported platforms, for the same prices. (The Netflix app itself costs nothing).

"The streaming catalog is the same for all Netflix-ready devices – iPhone, iPad, Xbox360, Wii, PS3, Blu-ray disc players, internet-connected TVs, TiVo, Roku, Sony Dash, [etc.]," Netflix vice president of communication Steve Swasey told Wired.com. And when you switch between platforms, your programming follows you, even down to the point at which you had paused a currently playing program.

From where we're sitting, here are the main attractive features of Netflix for the iPhone, in addition to its obvious advantage of mobility:

__Seamless playback across multiple devices: __The concept of media consumers switching from device to device while accessing the same entertainment flow gets a lot of lip service at media conferences, but now, it's actually happening. Hit pause on your PlayStation-connected television, head out the door, and pick up right from where you left off at the coffee shop, on your iPod Touch.

__Wi-Fi or 3G connection: __People pay a lot for their wireless cellular connections, so they get frustrated when they're told they can't use them for something. It's important that Netflix be viewable over 3G, even if the quality isn't as good as it is over Wi-Fi, because these are mobile devices, and their features should be mobile, too. As mentioned, AT&T now limits iPhone bandwidth, and iPads have always offered only limited-bandwidth plans, so you wouldn't want to watch this way every day. But these limits are almost certainly the reason the app can connect over 3G; some would call that a fair bargain.

Offline playback (We wish – updated. The app does not include offline playback). As we mentioned last year, a Netflix app would be significantly hamstrung without the ability to download and store content for local viewing, without relying on an outside connection. Either Netflix took our suggestion to heart, or was already thinking along the same lines. The company announcement reads, "Members can choose a movie or TV episode from any of the lists and just tap the innovative Multi-Touch user interface to watch instantly or to save the title for viewing later." (Contrary to what I'd reported here earlier, there's no way to save a recording in order to watch it without a data connection. This version of the app is streaming-only.)

Why watch television on an iPhone? On the other hand, why not?

Let's face it. We're busy people these days. When something like this comes along that lets us finish watching in our morning commute the movie we had to stop watching last night, or enables us to maximize the leisure time we grant ourselves during the average day – like catching the Louie episode about the dentist, while we're waiting to see a dentist – it's a good thing, information overload be damned.

Netflix-on-iPhone is huge news – and will become even huger if or when Apple extends its iOS empire (currently encompassing iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) to the television with an Apple TV-like device capable of running iOS apps including Netflix.

At some point, the strength of these alternate video-distribution routes could convince television and movie studios to decide to stop prioritizing traditional models (cable and satellite) and to give Netflix and similar services full access to all of their content, during the same release window.

Because, in the long run, it makes more sense to have the consumer pay for content-delivery pipes and associated hardware than to subsidize hardware and connections through cable and satellite companies. We're not there yet, but Netflix on the iPhone brings us another step closer.

Now, we just need to wait for SlingBox to release its iOS app too, and we'll be happy – albeit mobile – couch potatoes.

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