Sony Corp. and the DVD rental company announced the service Monday and plan to launch it next month. It will be available for free to PlayStation 3 owners who have a Netflix subscription that starts at $9.

Netflix streaming is already available on a broad range of devices, such as the Roku digital video player, Internet-connected TV sets (including Sony’s) and Blu-ray players — and the PlayStation 3’s archrival, Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360. On the Xbox, however, the Netflix streaming is available only to Xbox Live “Gold” members, who pay $50 a year mainly to play games online with friends in other places.

For Netflix Inc., the deal brings millions of potential new customers, to add to the 11.1 million it already has in the United States. About 9 million PlayStation 3 systems have been sold in U.S., and more than 25 million worldwide.

Movie streaming is an increasingly important service for Netflix even though it says it expects to keep renting DVDs until 2030. And Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said he would like the streaming service to be available on all three of the major gaming platforms — the Xbox, the Wii and the PlayStation. Until now, however, the company had an exclusive deal with Microsoft.

“The PlayStation 3 is an amazing video platform,” Hastings said in an interview.

This leaves the Wii as the last console without Netflix streaming. But even without it, the Wii is the top-selling console.

Netflix has about 17,000 movies and TV shows available for streaming, though few of them are new releases. This will expand the movies Sony already rents and sells through the PlayStation 3, and will give the company another feature to tout as it markets the PlayStation as a diverse entertainment device.

With a TV ad campaign whose slogan is “It Only Does Everything,” Sony is targeting men and women between 18 and 49 and playing up the console’s capabilities beyond gaming. Last year, its aim was still younger men, the gamer demographic.

“I think we always knew we made a significant investment in the PS3 and we were ahead of the time in terms of technology,” said Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America. “But technology that was mystifying to the consumer three years ago is being coveted now.”

To access the Netflix streaming service, PlayStation 3 users will have to pop in a Blu-ray disc that Netflix will mail out. The disc will access the Internet and activate the Netflix system so people can find movies to stream.

Verizon recently launched its DROID Does web and TV campaign which is a preview of their upcoming Motorola DROID, their longly-awaited iPhone-killer running Google’s Android 2.0 smartphone operating system.

Many carriers and device manufacturers have claimed to have iPhone-killers. They tried and failed to unseat the giant, which has a huge following of users and a massive application store. But right now, at least in the United States, iPhone is tied to AT&T Wireless, which has been riddled with 3G coverage problems, much to the frustration of the company’s subscribers. And if Verizon’s recent actions are any indication, iPhone is likely to stay where it is.

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Verizon has recently capitalized on AT&T’s coverage issues with their “There’s a map for that” TV campaign, which is a reference to Apple’s “There’s an App for that” series of advertisements that demonstrate the versatility of the iPhone with it’s App Store. Now Verizon has upped the ante with their “DROID DOES” commercial, which is a 400mm cannon volley right across the bow of the land of happy music and white earbuds.

The 30-second long commercial — which doesn’t even show the new smartphone, the previously code-named Motorola Sholes/Tao — puts it quite simply:

“We have a physical keyboard, we have multitasking, we can take 5 Megapixel photos with flash, our users can customize the UI, our development is Open Source, and our battery is replaceable. iPhone doesn’t do any of this.”

Whether this message and others which are sure to follow are enough to attract customers to the new DROID in droves remains to be seen, but honestly, I’m pretty psyched, and I’m probably going to buy one in November, the tentative launch timeframe for the new phone.

Since de-activating my BlackBerry only a few weeks ago I’ve been waiting to see what Verizon was going to come up with in terms of its smartphone strategy for 2010, with the hopes of signing up with them shortly.

The Verizon DROID, previously codenamed the Motorola Sholes.

I didn’t want another BlackBerry, I wasn’t signing up again with AT&T, and I definitely wasn’t going to go the T-Mobile route with Mytouch 3G because its coverage in my area of Northern New Jersey is absolutely abyssmal, as friends with T-Mobile phones that visit my house can’t get a single bar of reception and complain about coverage in Bergen County in general.

While indeed impressive from a pure software and technology perspective, I’m not interested in a Palm Pre because it’s currently running on Sprint, the smallest of the national 3G networks (Verizon is anticipating launching its own version in early 2010) and the hardware build quality of the device leaves much to be desired. And Windows Mobile 6.5? It just doesn’t do it for me.

Also Read: Verizon unveils 30-second ad for Droid Android phone; slams iPhone (Andrew Nusca)

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the DROID will offer in terms of its Google integration, corporate email sync capabilities, native Android applications as well as its overall performance. With its launch on Verizon, Google’s Android OS is about to be put to the test to see if it is now ready for prime time.

Do you think the DROID will make Apple very annoyed? Talk Back and Let Me Know.