With broadband Internet access speeds now the norm, rather than the exception, in America, and all kinds of digital media available -- plenty of it for free -- many consumers and competitors have been predicting the end of the popular Netflix movie rental company for some time, largely due to its traditional mail-based delivery model.

Not so fast, according to an interesting story from the New York Times, as Netflix has introduced an online service to deliver movies and TV programs to a user's PC as streaming video. And, better than that, it's free to Netflix subscribers!

All it takes is downloading some special software from the Netflix Web site to your Windows PC. Most of Netflix's subscriber base, who pays $18 every month to keep up to three movies at a time, receives 18 hours of free movie watching via the site (cheaper plans offer fewer hours). Also, should a customer not like a movie they've sampled via the Internet, they can stop it at any time and be charged for only the time they spent watching it.

Just goes to show you, one thing you can always count on in this life is change.