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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.
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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.
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"
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.
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.