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."

Comments

DirecTV

[The Only Druid]

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.

Re:DirecTV

[The Only Druid]

There are basically two extra features:

1) DirecTivo units have two seperate tuners, so they can record two seperate shows simultaneously, while watching a third previously recorded show. Standalone Tivos have one tuner, so they can only record one show while watching a prerecorded show.
2) DirecTV broadcasts their content in an Mpeg2 stream (although not a completely standdard mpeg2, since they implemented their format before the mpeg2 standard was complete). The DirecTivo records this stream without recompression, whereas Standalone units re-compress whatever signal they receive. This means that the DirecTivo unit introduces zero loss of quality, so watching a recorded DirecTV show is the same thing as watching it live.