Netflix has hired Anthony Park. Now, normally I wouldn't bother writing a post to let you know that a media company has gone and hired a developer. But Anthony Park happens to be the guy who created MyNetflix, one of the first Windows Media Center plugins that allowed you to stream videos from the Netflix web site on your TV using Windows Vista MCE.

Park says he'll be working on a research team "to build the next generation of the Netflix user experience." What that means is he'll be helping develop the user interface for accessing the Netflix service on a variety of different devices. If Netflix develops software for the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, or AppleTV, Park could be involved in developing the GUI.

Park says he also plans to continue developing MyNetflix on his own time.

[via Ian Dixon]

Anthony Park has released a new plugin for Windows Vista Media Center that lets you watch streaming videos from Netflix. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. MyNetflix also lets you manage your Netflix queue, browse movies by genre, new titles, top 100, or pretty much any other criteria, view your history and recommendations, and browse and play "watch now" videos.

MyNetflix is the evolution of the streaming plugin I told you about a few weeks ago. Developer Anthony Park has picked up on the work started by Ryan Hurst, and added the pretty MCML interface that makes MyNetflix look like it really belongs in Windows Vista Media Center.

MyNetflix is available as a public beta. As such, don't be surprised if not everything works perfectly. But development on the project has been pretty rapid, so I'd expect any major bugs to be stamped out pretty quickly. And of course, make sure to submit your bug reports to Park.

Incidentally, there's also a new plugin for SageTV that lets users of that media center suite browse and view Netflix videos as well.

[via Chris Lanier and Brent Evans]