This post will be upgraded as I find and assess tools to enhance my Netflix subscription.

The first tool is instantwatcher.com. As the site’s tagline proclaims, “Instantwatcher helps you find good streaming titles from Netflix.” The site will by no means ever be called “pretty” in its current incarnation (as of 27 July 2012) but in addition to the ads that no doubt help pay for this free service, there is a fair amount of information crammed onto the main page. There is a Premium version that runs only $9.95/year, and no, I did not ask for or receive a complimentary premium subscription (per the “About Instantwatcher Premium” page, “if you are a journalist or a blogger, you can get a free, complimentary one-year subscription to Instantwatcher Premium if you publish a post, article, or screencast showing how to get the most out of its features”).

Per the site’s tagline, the primary raison d’etre for this site is to more easily find movies to stream than is possible using the tools provided by Netflix. On the main page are sections such as “Most Popular in the Last 24 Hours,” “New & Noteworthy,” and “Notable Titles Expiring Soon.” At the very top are a number of links to genres and categories such as “NYT Critics’ Picks” and “English Subtitles.”

So how does instantwatcher search differ from that on the main Netflix web site? As an example, you could click on the “Rotten Tomatoes Fresh” link on the main page and then be presented with the fact that there are 676 steaming titles available under this category. In addition to the obligatory search box are a number of search options, such as how to search (normal, synopsis, minimal, and box art; popups or no popups; and whether to paginate the results or show all in an “infinite scroll”), type of stream (HD + non-HD, HD only, or non-HD), type of show (movie + tv, movies only, or tv only), rating, date range, and how to display the results (by release year, instant release date, title, Netflix rating, Rotten Tomatoes rating, expiration date, popularity, or runtime).

The second tool is abetterqueue.com.This site’s tagline is “filter and browse Netflix instant movies with Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer” and is obviously focused on providing a filter and search tool centered around rankings of movies from the Rotten Tomatoes site. More of a “proof of concept” than a multi-faceted tool, the author thanks Netflix for providing free and easy access to their API. You can create a filter based on three items: Tomatometer rating, years movies were released, and genres. The first two categories are set via sliders and the last by checking or unchecking 19 genres.

Abetterqueue is not as versatile as of July 2012 compared to instantwatcher but it is lean and visually appealing, with large movie thumbnails. Clicking on a movie thumbnail takes you to the Netflix site for full details about the movie. Of limited utility at the moment but potentially more useful if more features are added in the future.

You can also find instantwatcher.com and several other Netflix sites/tools described at PC World.