Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web
Patik writes "According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."
What will the terms of service be? Same rules as using this over satellite, or is the **AA going to have a fit over this (though I think we may already know that answer)?
Seriously I can do all this stuff now. These companies are so far behind the curve technologically one would be forgiven for thinking they don't deserve to make any money out of this. I'm struggling to see where they are adding value to the consumer.
----
Pr0n comes to TiVo.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.
Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.
Still, I can see it working. There are a lot of people (hello, #divx on irchighway) who probably would pay for movies if they could download them easily and at high quality because of the unreasonable exertion that walking to the shops causes and the long queues for new releases on the fservs. These people probably all have fat pipes anyway, so it's not an extra cost.
My only problem is that I would have to buy a TV card as the A/V set up on my computer is far better than that on my TV. Bigger screen, much much better resolution and nicer speakers. Makes renting/borrowing DVDs nicer than a video-output-only device.
Beep beep.
Actually, Tivo wasn't 'dumped' by DirecTV. It was their stock in Tivo that they dropped (they had held 3.4 million shares).
This quote from the ArsTechnica article should elaborate:
"Though confirming the recent sale of TiVo stock for $24 million, DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci denied it indicates a change in the companies' relationship. "It's consistent with what we have done earlier this year in liquidating some of our portfolio of investments,'' Marsocci said. DirecTV sold its entire stake in XM Satellite Radio earlier this year."
As Ars mentions, this is certainly a bit of bad news for Tivo (and people like me, who love the extra features in DirecTivo units as compared to normal Tivos, and thus fear a full seperation...) but not as much of a 'drop' as this post implies.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I've never seen a digital video - either a downloaded DVD rip or something more official - which can compare to the quality of rips I do myself. There's no discussion over choice of codecs, nor what kinds of resolution to expect (and does anyone have the patience or room for HDTV-resolution movies?)
Replay allows users to share programs they've already recorded with others via the "Send Show" feature. This transmits up to 15 digital copies of shows over the Internet to other ReplayTV owner.
This also allows people who have not paid for premium channels to watch premium content for free.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Who isn't already downloading movies off the internet?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
the head of the MPAA was quoted as saying, "Make the bad men stop!!!"
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
And iiinnn the red corner is Tivo a small but deeeaaaadly black box, iiinnn the BLUEE corner, is the huuuulking eiight huuundddreeedd poound gorillla motionpictureassociation OF AMERICAAAAAAAA!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Tivo should become a cable company...bare with me for a moment. Big hard drive and good compression, fat pipe into the house, customers trained to watch things at odd ball times and not necessairly at the time of broadcast. Get a couple of networks together and will send the favorites to your Tivo box and you can watch them at some other point. Delivered shows without having to have a satelite or cable package! Send my wife House Hunters from HDTV, send me some History channel and I don't have to go spend 50 bucks for cable because I get it sent directly to me.
It would be a very interesting business model to employ something similar to Bit-Torrent for their distribution system. I immediately thought of the same problem, until I realized the incredible transfer rates you'd achieve with thousands of customers using an automated distributed content system.
A caveat would be that they'd have to have a large number of servers to handle the load of "esoteric" titles - that is, movies that only a very few people will download at any given time. Also, the distribution would be much faster for popular movies - Bit-Torrent relies on swarming and things.
But it'd be really interesting to see this kind of an implementation, even if they did rewrite the original.
Yeah, Tivo users will be able to download such internet classics as:
Fat Kid imitating Darth Maul
Drunk guy lighting fart on fire
Black guy talking about Whistle Tips on Car Muffler
Boy, You Tivo users sure are missing out on the latest in internet based video.
I was about | | far from ordering a "directivo" as they called it from Directv. (yes i know they are RIAA evil and sue anyone). There just isn't an competition in my market. Charter runs the cable company and they can't keep the cable up without an outage for longer than 24 hours. That left me with a choice between Directv and Dish Network.
Where is Directv going with this? I don't see anything in the article about a directv PVR replacement for the Tivo partnership.
Speaking of partnerships are we now allowing &partner=google on the main page?
-mck
On the surface this sounds great! I imagine this will be a ligit subscription service with parties lined up to play content provider in order to avoid them being the next Napster.
But how feasible is this?
Licensing media for internet is a complete pyrhia as far as the MPAA/RIAA is concerned -- though they have seemed to be a little less rabid towards those who try to play along and pay up as of late.
Also -- what quality can we be expecting.
People like me are all about HD content and with new services like Voom who focus on HD and are providing their own integerated tuner/DVR hardware (not yet released should be out within the next 2-3 months, how many devices are we expected to purchase?
Sure, if net-ready TiVo comes out, I'll be one of the first to buy -- but what's to keep the others from bullying them out? If DirecTV does kick TiVo to the curb, what's to prevent them from cross-licensing to the content providers themselves? I mean if BlockBuster or others start streaming, why would they limit themselves to TiVo owners only when any DSL/Cable/Satelite carrier can offer up a clone of the hardware/firmware and offer it to their hundreds of thousands of subscribers?
So while this sounds like a great move for TiVo in the short run, I'm not too optimistic about them not getting swallowed up/beaten to death by the big hitters who'll wait to see how it does in the market and then swoop down for hardball when/if it takes off.
Most cable companies already offer PPV, Porn, and most recently Entertainment on Demand stuff through their cable boxes. It's not very hard to record that feed into your computer and have it as a rip. Costs are low (3.95 per movie), however, I would imagine that the size would not be.
I got the wireless network adapter for my TiVo last week and it already streams music from a folder called TiVo Online in the trial subscription of the "home media option." It has about 10 songs from "In Da Club" to "Stupid Girl."
Indeed, as Netflix practically begs you to make copies of your "rentals". I live about 10 miles away from a distribution center, so even USPS first class is next day for me. With their 5-disc $30 plan, I get about 20 new movies a month. And while such ripping violates the CDMA, it is an unenforcable aspect of copyright law. Back in the VHS days, rental stores assumed that most tapes were dubbed, and the MPAA did too, but there was nothing that could be done there, and little than can be here.
The article states that you need over 5 Mb/s to stream DVD quality video to consumers. Sure...if you are using Mpeg-2...
I've used the VideoLan player to stream a 3 Mb/s Xvid + 5.1 Surround AC3 stream with little or no buffering directly to my cable modem.
It works, and it's as good as DVD. Most cable modems are capable of at least 2.5 Mb/s. The only problem is network conjestion.
Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.
Ya know, there are more than two letters in the alphabet to choose from.
Broadband movies over Tivo? Whats wrong with Digital TV? It supports HDTV and Widescreen and Surround Sound so its a viable option, why did they decide to go with broadband instead?
My solution would be this:
Look, people say that they want television on demand... but as a Tivo owner of less than a year, I will tell you straight that they don't know what they want, but as a Tivo owner, I do. They just want to watch their shows when they sit down. When the shows get there? Not an issue.
They should make channels to take the programs and run them at something like ten to twelve times as fast as normal, or put them in file format and stream them exceedingly fast similar to a network.
In a few minutes you could have it. More importantly, this solves the whole commercial skip issue. You could have custom commercials dropped in based on the person you were marketing to. Imagine they know I am a computer geek by my Tivo, and they can hit me with a custom Half-Life 2 commercial. Would I watch it? HELL YES I WOULD.
It is not like I don't want to see ads. I scan the Sunday ads for bargains. I look at the local bargain newspapers. The problem with ads is that I am seeing ads that aren't my thing. I don't care about pantyhose. I am a man. If you give me a new barbecue sauce ad, I'll watch it. If you give me ads for a new processor, YES, I'll watch it. Gimme a movie trailer. I'll watch it.
Yes, I know it is not truly "video on demand," but the network needs would be exponentially increased for a true video on demand system... it would get worse until there was packet gridlock. If you ran four channels at ten times speed, you would have the content of forty channels for four band slots. Think about all of the channels this way. Would the public care if it said please wait five minutes for delivery? Only if the TV had no way to hold programs and search for them, lying in wait. Or would they like to delete a whole slew of programs and have the Tivo pick out another ten of them for them while they were browsing? You could repeat content through the day, have a fast delvery, and still not have to drop a huge network on top of a cable system.
My issue is that I think that video on demand is overrated. I think with a hard drive on my end I don't care when I get it... I am not enough of a brat to need it "NOW! Mommy! NOW!" If you speed up television delivery, and as the hard drive TVs have already shown, that video on demand WON'T MATTER AT ALL when your system knows what you like and gives it to you in anticipation. If you think that I want to press a button and get a crystal clear movie instantly, you're wrong. I want to browse. But whether I browse on a network or in my box is irrelevant... because currently my Tivo gives me a slew of choices. There is just not that much content.
Imagine the network architecture issues when people start "browsing" video on demand, because in essence, their slapping around giant files like people slap through channels.
Sure, video on demand can be done. It just looks so cost prohibitive right now that it is insane. The only real benefit of video on demand would be for news. Then I can custom my newscast. Lose the biased reporters. As a newsman, I admit, that would rock.
It should be mentioned that DirectTV did not "DUMP" Tivo, they instead dumped the shares of tivo that they owned. They will still be using tivo technology in thier receivers.
Also. the home media option is now available to every Tivo2 owner for free. No more $99. YAYYYY. Also, they have dropped the rates of seperate Tivos. While the first Tivo is still $12.95 per month, each extra Tivo in your house is only $6.95
Seeing as how DirecTV is the biggest customer of TiVo products and a huge source for TiVo revenue off subscriptions is it insider trading for DirecTV to one day up and decide to sell millions of shares of TiVo stock without fully discolsing why they did it. I mean they say it is just to liquidate some assets. But really it is likely not the reason at all. They definately have access to privelaged info and are using it to their gain here. Somehow I can't see them selling TiVo stock if they were going to double the number of units they license software for!
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
3) DirecTivo units record and playback Dolby Digital 5.1 content (though this relates to #2 that you mentioned-- because Tivo doesn't modify the original stream). DirecTivo units have optical digital output, standalones do not.
4) DirecTivo units are available that support HDTV. They are expensive, and they have 250GB drives, but there are no standalone high-definition Tivo units yet. Also, the HD DirecTivo units have FOUR tuners... two satellite, and two antenna inputs for local HD channels. I'm not sure if it's capable of recording on all 4 simultaneously-- that's a lot of hard drive bandwidth!
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Go here
Sure, that's the price early adopters pay, but TiVo should do more for them beyond mailing out a few dozen cute stuffed TiVo characters to those folks.
I didn't RTFA, but
TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web
"According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."
So is it streaming or downloading? There is differnce.
... I really do.
Windows XP Media Center
breaking into market or crushing market. either way it's here or nearly here. as usual, everyone has to go nuts. it does the tivo thing, it does the windows thing, and it also does the crushing competition thing. did they miss anything?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
OK, I know that we geeks love the best of the best of the best..with honors...but do we really need high-definition or DVD-quality recordings? Sure, these kinds of recordings definitely look the best, but at what cost? I'll gladly admit that the company with the best quality for the lowest price will probably come out ahead, but why not leverage slightly worse picture quality to provide better bandwidth usage and greater choice? Current Cable and Satellite TV certainly aren't typically "DVD-quality".
Case and point: I own a ReplayTV 5040 digital video recorder. It has three MPEG-2 recording levels: "High", "Medium", and "Standard". "High" is excellent for watching sports and fast action, yielding very littly artifacting. "Standard", on the other hand, is great for "Talking Head" shows like news and talk shows that have little action. "Medium" falls somewhere in between. Contrary to popular trends where people typically record everything at High quality "to get the best picture", I record everything in Medium quality because it simply is an excellent comporomise between quality and file size. (I can burn about 3 hours of Medium quality video to a DVD, and it looks great.)
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Then promptly watch ISP's shut down these early adopters for actually using their broadband connection at full capacity...
I just don't understand the whole hype, it is only TV...are there not better things to do in life then drool over how many TV shows you can record at once, watch at once, and PAY through the nose, just to be entranced...I have cable, but dont record anything off it, if it is a sci-fi series I am a fan of, I'll wait for the DVD, and BUY it. ...this is slashdot though, and who can phathom the terrabytes of pr0n sitting on the slashdot Tivo's...
karma, hah...
going to tank cause of all the folks on my node d/l-ing movies! Thanks a lot! It's bad enough with the Linux distros and pr0n d/l-er's. What happens when the broadband ISPs start limiting everyone to X Gigs of d/l per month? Go rent the friggin DVD. It's a lot quicker.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
What % (roughly, back of napkin rules apply) of your customers subscribing to these various TV on demand schemes would it take before you would start to lose money on bandwith increases over what you are facing right now?
Don't know about Netflix, but DVDBarn (a similar service) is starting to send out copies of the originals. They have the originals in a vault and maintain a 1:1 ratio, so they're well within fair use rights. That drives the replacement cost much lower, because now the replacement cost is only that of whatever DVD-R is in bulk and a few minutes of employee time.
Blockbuster now has a netflix type plan for around $30. You get 3 movies at a time and you can return movies several times a day if you want. So 3 movies at a time for 30 days and you get 90+ movies a month... even more if you want to make more than 1 trip a day. Netflix is dead.
Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it. As much as I love my tivo -- and I've got both an SA and a DTivo -- it rankles me hear about this stuff and know that it's probably still six, eight, ten months away.
Just once, I'd like these places to make the announcment and then immediately have the functionality. I mean, didn't tivo three months ago announce something about XM radio and the ability to burn programs to DVD?
Where is it? Where's my XM radio on the tivo? Where's the software I can download to burn some stuff on DVD?
It's nowhere.
This isn't so much about announcing new technology as it is trying to regain (or hold) marketshare from the directv sell off. Tivo is admirable in that they have vision enough to make an endrun around both satellite and cable -- and assume (probably correctly) that *eventually* the internet will be the repository for most content.
But this ain't gonna happen anytime soon, that's for sure. And that bothers me. Enough already with the announcements and demos. Just put it out and let the market use it.
cripes.
I'm assuming DVD-R. I've just gotten the notification that I may start seeing it soon. Perhaps they have the means to copy the DVD's onto the same style media as the originals.
Might work if not for the MPAA/RIAA they will screw it up some how.
I look for them to start redoing the comercials of the 80's that were done for polution. hmmm "A MPAA guy (older man looking haggard) looking over a of poor hollywood types that are starving and turns to the camera with a tear down running down his cheek" Sigh...
Just watch. TiVo's founder is also on NetFlix's board of directors. Now if both companies would combine the viewer ratings. That would be so money. Although the US Postal Service will be screaming "uncle" over it.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I've been saying for a year or two now that well before the end of the decade (let's just say by 2007, if you want to get specific) you will start to see some major cable networks (by which I mean folks like Discovery/TLC, FoodTV, etc.) "break from the pack" and start offering programming DIRECT to subscribers via the Internet.
... but believe me, the tipping point will soon be reached where someone runs the numbers and realizes they can make more $$$ without cable ... and when one or two do it, watch out for the stampede.
... who says it has to be great? For most programming, near-VHS quality will suit just fine ... I don't really need to see the news or re-runs of Family Guy in 1080i ...
The pieces are all there (just like I can DL a flick from MovieLink) to get programming a la carte from these folks, it's just a matter of one company having the will to pee on the cableco's
By the way, on the whole "quality/bandwidth" issue
Why do you think the cableco's now offer a suite of services (broadband, VoIP, etc)? That diversification is the only thing that will keep them alive when TV "broadcasting" (or "cablecasting") as we know it ceases to be.
Imagine! Getting all the Adult Swim you want for $4.95/month! All WITHOUT having to shell out $50 to Time-Warner or Comcast for the privilege of subsidizing VH1 and QVC!!
- - - - -
See you space cowboy
I bet they will use a P2P network to distribute the media. This could potentially shine a positive light on the technology and distance them from the RIAA.
Maybe because more people have broadband than digital TV?
Or maybe it is easier to be a broadband publisher and have people pull (download) content from you than get a new digital TV channel carried everywhere to push (upload) it to them (look at G4 having to buy TechTV to get greater market penetration).
You might as well ask why people adopted VHS over Beta.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Like others have already said, Tivo announced that they are considering offering on-demand-style programming separate from live broadcast network fare. This is no different from normal on-demand material, except that it is a Linux box smartly going out over your net connection to retrieve the content.
Tivo is struggling, now, to keep their customer base and to get others. They know that any geek with a Linux box and a tuner can pull together a new product that could displace them, so they are trying to keep the value of their product intact.
They have done some incredible things, and created a whole new disruptive technology, which I love. But they are making several mistakes. For one thing, I can't be the only person on the planet who wants separate folders for my search lists and content. I want all the 'Mail Calls' I can get, and my girlfriend wants all the 'SpongeBob' episodes. How about multiple users, Tivo?
Most Tivo hacking has been concerned with getting more disk space into the box. How hard would it be to allow my Tivo to archive or store overflow content on one or more networked shares?
And they are finally getting around to HDTV capability.
It will be interesting to see where Tivo is one year from now.
Make the Play bar disappear faster so you can read text on the screen.
This code take the format of "Select Play Select Something Select". These do not require backdoors to be enabled for them to work. The best way to do this type of code is to start playing a recorded program and do them while the recorded program is playing. They can be done from LiveTV as well, but people generally have a hard time getting them to work when trying to do that.
Select-Pause-Select-Pause-Select - Toggles the fast disappear of the Play bar. Appears to have no other major effect, but who knows.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
You can have an upload stream and a download stream. Upload/download signifies whether you are the sender/recipient of the intended data. Streaming refers to the way that the data is sent so that it can be read on-the-fly (or with a little caching), as well as some more technical merits around such.
I understand, however, that you are refering to the paradigm of downloading a complete file VS a streamed (semi-realtime viewable) copy, but this doesn't mean that the article is incorrect.
DirecTV sold their stake in the company but they are not dumping the boxes. The new HDTV tivos have directv tuners in them as well as analog. DirecTV has never had an exclusive deal so they may well start offering another el-cheapo DVR but that doesn't mean tivo is going away.
So you can do this now? You can sit on the couch and decide, in the middle of a show to record it from the beginning? Without getting off the couch? Just by punching a button on the remote? Or you can decide to record all new episodes of that show, again using the remote, sitting on your a** on the couch? Or you can't find anything on your 200 channels to watch and you can check what was automatically recorded by your PVR based on your likes and dislikes, again, without getting off the couch? Can you pause live TV when distractions happen, without any tinkering at the computer? I could go on, but TiVo does all this and more, simply, elegantly, and in the most user friendly way you could imagine. I bought a Philips TiVo box 4 years ago and never had a problem. This spring I bought a new box (wanted more space) and hooked it to my wireless network (just worked, no fuss) and now with the included home media option I play my music collection through the stereo using my TiVo box. I'll probably buy another box for the upstairs tv later this summer, too. And then I'll be able to send recorded shows from one box to another. Can you do that on your computer?
The new HDTivo can tune over the air (OTA) HDTV. That's how I get most of my HDTV content. But they cannot tune analog stations. Luckily, almost all my local stations transmit in ATSC digital, even though many of them are SD (not HD) only.
Anyway, HDTiVo:
DirectTV content, SD and HD
Digital OTA content, SD and HD.
No analog NTSC OTA content whatsoever.
Does this also mean I'd be able to view my video downloads off of kazaa (or anywhere) via an enhancement to the HMO server. So you have Music, Photos, Video.
I would really love that. In fact, that's what's holding me back from buying another tivo. If it can't even do that, I should get/build a Freevo that can do all that in a better way, and cheaper.
The technical challenges are greater but the model is very similar, TiVo will sell boxes and the studios will get their money.
Does this mean I'll finally be able to watch Homestar Runner on my TiVo?
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/040609/15/3kxkz.html
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The relationship between TiVo Inc. (TIVO) and DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV) is going strong and there is no talk of changing it, Chief Executive Officer Michael Ramsay said Wednesday.
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"The reality is, we have a great commercial relationship" with DirecTV, Ramsay he told those attending a media conference in New York sponsored by Deutsche Bank, which was webcast.
Ramsey emphasized that TiVo has gotten strong support from DirecTV, and that the enthusiasm has not waned despite recent events.
DirecTV Vice Chairman Eddy Hartenstein stepped down from TiVo's board of directors last week after only eight months. Then, DirecTV confirmed it sold its 4% stake in TiVo on Tuesday.
A 4% stake is not significant for a company like News Corp. (NWS), he said. News Corp., run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, took over control of DirecTV late last year by buying a 34% stake. News Corp., Ramsay added, is clearly in the process of cleaning up the balance sheet and making some treasury-related transactions.
Ramsay also defended Hartenstein's resignation from the board, saying "he just didn't have time to do it."
Regarding speculation that DirecTV might be positioning News Corp.-owned NDS (NNDS) to replace TiVo, Ramsay said, "We're it right now," adding that the relationship won't change "for as long as I can see."
DirecTV is planning on rolling out some new set-top boxes later this year. The boxes, made by Thomson (TMS), will incorporate TiVo technology.
In the meantime, TiVo is seeking a deal with a cable operator as well as more clout for its standalone product.
TiVo is "very focused" on a cable deal but has not yet secured an "appropriate relationship" and is not ready to announce anything imminently, he said.
"I don't really want to build expectations that a cable relationship is do or die. It's important, but we're not saying that it's around the corner," he said.
To beef up its retail appeal, TiVo dropped the price of its service to $12.95 Wednesday and also lowered the purchase price on TiVo units to $129. The company also added features allowing customers to move music and pictures between their PCs and TiVo unit. This fall, the company will also launch a product that will let users transfer a movie from TiVo to a PC or DVD burner.
By Ellen Sheng, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5863; ellen.sheng@dowjones.com
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
The problem with ads is that I am seeing ads that aren't my thing. I don't care about pantyhose. I am a man.
If watching a Victoria's Secret ad isn't your thing, you're no man I've ever heard of. Straight or gay!
Chief Iron Eyes Cody played in the ad which debuted on Earth Day in 1971:
snopes.com
Why doesn't Tivo implement peer to peer video on demand? The infrastructure is already here, so the capital required would be minimal. Probably just salaries for a few hackers, for six months. Looks like someone is thinking about it anyway.
Example.
My DSL provides me about 150KiB per second throughput over its advertised 1.5Mib per second downstream connection. Note that not everyone sees this kind of speed even today. At my former house I was lucky to see 90KiB per second, and that was only a service I was able to get within the last year.
Assume an average DVD movie is four to six GiB. This is typical from what I have seen of pressed dual layer discs. We have to push all that data through a pipe like mine in reasonable time. Let's use 5GiB as the average amount we need to push per movie.
Time to push 5GiB thru 150KiB per second connection --
(5 x 1024 x 1024) / 150 == 34953 seconds
That's almost ten hours to transfer your 1.5 to 2 hour movie. This presumes the connection is healthy during that entire time. This also presumes my ISP will let me transfer this much data regularly.
So I guess I could make a request from BlockBuster.com to begin transferring my movie in the morning, for viewing after work at night. Or maybe I could transfer a movie overnight for next day's viewing.
But this kills all my bandwidth for ten hours. If I use the connection simultaneously for other stuff during that time, I may significantly delay the arrival of my movie.
Note: Even if you have a cable modem and see speeds double of what I see, that is 300KiB per second, it's still gonna take 5 hours to get your movie.
In these days of instant gratification, I'm not sure waiting ten hours to get a movie is fast enough. I can walk to and from my video store in twenty minutes, and they likely have the movie I want.
I know the pipes will get faster. But won't the movies be higher res by then also?
All TiVo has to do (for a start) is to start automatically downloading movies to subscribers. Call it the "weekend movie special" and send it down in chunks over the course of Thurs/Fri. Subscribers would have a 'coming attraction' to view all week, indicate that they want it to be downloaded by pressing Thumbs Up, and presto! An instant date night ready and waiting for you come the weekend.
Yes, instant gratification would be swell -- so maybe that option would be to have the movie be streamed across the 'net from a TiVo server (and allow the viewer access to pause the program, and ff/rew through maybe 10 minutes tops).