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Olimpia Sawaia
To start, I found an (admittedly old) post from someone at Netflix stating that their licensing requirements prohibited them from providing ways to control the player externally (everything needed to be wrapped up in a netflix-branded application, and providing ways to interact with the player externally would allow you to embed the netflix player in places it shouldn't go.) You can find that reply here (although it's four years old, I'd imagine not much has changed.)
I tried snooping around on the 'watch instantly' page myself, and there are objects like netflix.SilverLight and netflix.SilverLight.MoviePlayer (which has a getPlugin() method that returns some details about the plugin, and hookable events, but no methods for control,) but they mostly have to do with exposing the size of the player viewport, among other things necessary to place it on the page. I couldn't really find anything in any of the objects that suggested they interacted with the movie player that would seem to allow me access to it.
I also snagged the player binaries, and snooping through them I've found a ScriptInterface object internally with [ScriptableMember]-decorated methods in it called PlayMovie(), StopMovie(), ShowCurtain(), HideCurtain().
Then, I noticed there's another namespace in the player binaries called Netflix.Silverlight.CBPApp.HostedPlayer, which has its own interface - HostedPlayerScriptInterface. This has everything you want in it - data on play position, controls for increasing and decreasing play speed, pausing, playing, setting the play position, querying play state, etc. All of these are decorated as [ScriptableMember]s.
Now I break your heart - it looks like (for whatever reason) this interface is not exposed as a [ScriptableType], which to my understanding is a requirement for being able to access it from javascript. In fact, the only things that seem to be exposed this way are events that the player fires. My guess is that this code is for integrating with other partners, or left over from someone they inherited the original code for the video player from, but it seems intentionally that this [ScriptableType] parameter is left out. There may be a way to request a binary that's built to be 'Hosted', though I'm not sure what that means, and I also suspect it will be transparently obvious to the people watching what you're trying to do and have a stop put to it quickly.
Sorry for the long-winded response that ends in disappointment, but it appears as of right now there's not really a way to do this. I've seen some suggestions that basically amount to sending keystrokes to the browser window that emulate the keyboard controls, but this clearly isn't what you're looking for, so I'm going to go with 'no' as an answer here. :)
So, looks like you need to trick the Netflix player into thinking it's running in hosted player mode. There's some configuration options that can be passed in, but I'm not sure how, specifically, you would do that. It looks like that's all set up on player initialization - maybe some sort of bookmarklet could reload the page and inject a change? Or maybe just reload the player and change the settings.
Bear in mind I haven't done much of this javascript interop stuff so much of this is inferred from the documentation, but it does seem as if there is a javascript control API in there, it's just a matter of tricking the player into working in Hosted mode.
Going to have to stop here, but hopefully this gives you a good start. I've dumped the contents of that hosted player Javascript API file so you can see the methods that will be exposed once you manage to get the player in Hosted mode.
In Silverlight for a method to be exposed to JavaScript directly, it needs attributes [ScriptableType] on its class and [ScriptableMember] on itself. You could try opening up the XAP file for the Netflix player, disassembling the main assembly, and searching for any methods with [ScriptableMember] attached to them. This may not turn up anything useful at all, but it is something you can try nonetheless.
At last, my collection is complete. Just the other day I received my invite to the beta of Redbox Instant. I was excited. The idea sounds great: it's like Netflix, but you also get four monthly credits at Redbox rental kiosks! Awesome, right? What's that? Verizon has something to do with it? Well, no matter. It's not exclusive to the carrier's handsets, so I'm sure it's nothing to worry about! I'm ready to get my hands all up on this thing.
Note: This is currently an unreleased preview product, and comes with all the requisite disclaimers. I will leave this blanket 'things could get better by the time it's released' caveat here, because repeating it every time I mention something bad would be too cumbersome.
I promise, I will have at least some nice things to say about Redbox Instant during this hands-on, but you will probably not know it if you only read this section because the process to get into the beta is god awful. Not just bad, but broken. If you score an invite and use Chrome, may I recommend you change to Firefox, because I had multiple occasions where entering required info returned errors that were not reported, and the page simply stared at me.
Assuming you don't encounter the bugginess of the sign-up process, however, the design of the invite accounts is unbelievably weird. You must provide your access code each time you log in, and on every device. You cannot use an invite code to give your account access and expect the server to simply remember. I have signed up for hundreds of accounts for things over the years and have never encountered this idea. Whatever. Keep that initial email handy.
Of course, the invite code problem will be moot by the time the service goes public, but the rest of the issues are very worrying. There are only a couple of months left until Redbox Instant is slated to go live and billing seems like an essential service. While it's possible that this will be ironed out in that very short amount of time, there are a lot of things that need fixing and this doesn't give me warm, happy feelings about the potential here.
Once you're in, the quintessential problem of any web service rears its ugly head: "Alright. Now what do I do?" Most of you have probably heard that Redbox Instant is like Netflix, so you'll be looking for movies to watch instantly, right? Well, that's where things immediately become weird. You see, this site isn't just designed to get you to streaming movies. Movies that are available in retail kiosks, as well as streaming movies you can rent for a fee or buy outright (similar to the Play Store model) are all mixed in. When I first logged in, here is what I saw:
That big banner at the top featured three slides, each with two hero images. Of the six total promoted slots, five were movies (one was a collection) and only two were available for streaming. Ted, The Dark Knight Rises, and Pitch Perfect were all promoted, but only available online if I paid extra. This has already resulted in some confusion on the part of users who found their credit card charged to watch movies. For what it's worth, it's impossible to rent a movie without multiple steps that inform you that you will be paying extra money. However, since you are required to include a credit card on your account (so they can charge you a subscription fee when your free trial runs out), it's relatively easy to breeze through it, or for someone else to spend money with the account you left logged in. It's not designed poorly, per se, but given that the subscription option is what everyone is eager to try, this bizarre integration is likely to trip up users.
Discovery isn't that great, but it's not much worse than Netflix. Search, however, is fundamentally broken. Typing in a movie title doesn't return auto completes like just about every other search engine in the world, but that's something I'm prepared to overlook. However, each time you search for a title, you have to specify what category you want: subscription, kiosk, or rent/buy. Ignoring for just a moment that you also "rent" from the vending machines in stores, so it's not terribly clear to the end user that "renting" here means a streaming rental, the fact that the default search results include all options is just plain obnoxious.
If I want specifically to find streaming titles, I can't do that. Let's say I want to see if the new Amazing Spider-Man is available to watch instantly. I'll just type that entire title in the search box and...
I will ignore for just a moment that cover art is appearing multiple times for the same movie. I will also ignore that some of those instances of art for the same title are bizarrely colored differently. I will ignore all of that because they are minor qualms when compared to the lack of one very major feature: any indication of which titles are streaming, which are digital rentals, and which are only in kiosks at a glance. You can hover over each thumbnail to get some info, but even that isn't entirely clear as a red "Watch Now" button will appear for rentals, purchases, and streaming alike. You can't confirm which one it is without manually filtering search results (which, again, you have to do for every damn query), or by going to the title's page itself. As an example, the original Spider-Man movie depicted above is available to "watch now," but only if you pay $10 to buyit.
Oh, and as if the confusion about ways to watch a movie wasn't enough, you'll notice that video games also appear in search results. The only way to ensure they are not included is to just not be searching for kiosk titles. You can select to group results by type, so games get their own line, but you can't leave them out entirely. Listen, Redbox is going to remind you of the existence of those ubiquitous and unavoidable vending machines whether you like it or not.
Oh, and heaven help you if you're browsing for movies to stream and you're not searching for them directly. Let's try an experiment, shall we? I'm going to search specifically for The Expendables (which is available to watch instantly). I will refine that search down to just subscription results, then click on that title. Now, on that movie's page, you will see four related entries "like this one." Can you guess, from looking at the thumbnails, which ones are available to stream for free, which are paid rentals/purchases, and which are only available on a disc?
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