Can Netflix Instant-watch run on Mac with Crossover?

I set out to answer this question today, and my short answer is No. Netflix minimum system requirements are:

Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, or Windows Vista
Internet Explorer version 6 or higher
Windows Media Player version 11 (DRM version 5145) or later
An active broadband connection to the Internet
1.0 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
3 GB free hard disk drive space


With Crossover, applications are installed into "bottles". Think of a bottle as a shell for the application which emulates the folders and hookups that would be found in each windows operating system. There's a bottle for 98, 2000, XP and Vista. Running IE6 inside an XP bottle makes it think it's running on Windows XP.

I was able to successfully install IE6 into an XP bottle, although I was warned before beginning that I would encounter errors. The installation went perfectly but certain web pages were not viewable in IE6 or produced strange errors. IE6 did work just fine in a Win98 bottle.

Now for the next part - Windows Media Player 11. I had to download this installer from FileHippo and its installation did not complete. So without that peice of the puzzle, I'm afraid Mac users like myself will not yet be able to enjoy our Instant Watch on our Macs without Parallels or VMware.