Tivo and Netflix Partner For DVDs on Demand

Tonetheman writes "The details are not really there yet, but it looks like Tivo and Netflix are going to team up! This is great for those who watch a lot of DVD's. You will be able to order a DVD and have it appear sometime later on the Tivo. Blockbuster will not be far behind with your favorite cable company."

Comments

Awesome idea

[tabacco]

I like the sound of it. One of my biggest complaints about Netflix was that you couldn't just say "Oh man, I really want to see !" and go get it to watch that night. Admittedly, their shipping service is fast, but it's still not the same when you have to wait a day or two to get it. But if I could download it (or at least get it streaming) instantly or within a couple of hours, that'd be pretty darn cool :)

Re:Awesome idea

[mrpuffypants]

I think a more revolutionary solution would be to allow remote queuing/renting of movies. Think of it this way:

You're at work and you hear about this really funny new Zombie movie called "Shaun of the Dead". You check Netflix and they have it for DVD in 3 days or TiVo delivery that evening.

The netflix website interfaces directly with the TiVo network and you schedule a download of the movie.

When you get home it's completely downloaded to your TiVo (or darn close to it) and you can enjoy the movie without waiting.

It'd be something that I know I'll look into, for sure.

Re:Awesome idea

[accelleron]

It is an interesting concept, but take a look at this:

- Cable/Sattellite companies have the capability to stream high-res content to your TV
- Cable/Sat companies have thecapability to have different people watching different channels
- Cable/Sat companies have vast amounts of storage space and proccessing power.

What, therefore, stops them from ripping all of the DVD's in, say, NetFlix's library into their format, storing it on their server, and putting up a request system.

Then, any time someone would want to watch a movie, they'd simply have to hit a button, and the movie would be queued from the provider's central server, and streamed immediately and directly to the user's channel using a server/client setup. Considering the amount of processing power needed to play/stream a DVD is a nominal 500-700MHz, and these people's server power, I think this is more than possible. Question is, where the hell is it.

Re:Awesome idea

[dpletche]

What, therefore, stops [Cable/Sat companies] from ripping all of the DVD's in, say, NetFlix's library into their format, storing it on their server, and putting up a request system.

Answer: you're talking about the cable companies, not the most innovative or customer-focused industry.

The satellite providers show more promise, but I doubt it's feasible until/unless receiver boxes have PVR capabilities. I strongly doubt that satellites have infinite bandwidth to support pointcasting to thousands of distinct clients at once. It would be much more practical to:
1) Cache top-sellers on receivers at all times, flipping a bit to enable viewing when ordered;
2) Spool other movies to subscribers on demand, potentially segmenting the data into priority-queued sections in order to provide near-immediate gratification.

Re:Awesome idea

[BurritoWarrior]

You can already remotely schedule programs on your TiVo through the tivo.com web site. I would think that this "on demand" service would also be added to the remote scheduling options.

Comcast already does this...

[stubear]

"...Blockbuster will not be far behind with your favorite cable company."

Comcast already offers movies through their OnDemand service and I don't have to wait for them to download before I watch them. The service unblocks access to the movie I want for 24 hours so I can watch it anytime I want before the time's up.

Strangeberry

[BigHungryJoe]

Strangeberry software, codeveloped by one of the writers of Sun's Java programming language, allows users to plug a DSL or cable modem into the back of the TiVo device and draw digital content like music and movies off the Internet.

TiVo can already use your broadband connection to download their programming info. Does anyone know exactly what Strangeberry does? The TiVo press release just described it as "protocols and tools for delivery of broadband."

I'm also wondering if this is going to be an update to your existing TiVo software, or if it'll be another $100 add-on, like Home Media Option.

-bhj

This could be huge

[jskiff]

As an avid Netflix subscriber and recent TiVo purchaser, this sounds great. Being able to add a movie to my queue and then watch it within hours, as opposed to ~2 days would be quite cool.

Of course I haven't R'dTFA, but I wonder what the disk space requirements are for this? The 40 hour units don't exactly have a ton of space.

I also wonder how the MPAA is going to agree to this; it's already fairly trivial to telnet or FTP to a TiVo, pull the programs off, and burn them to a DVD (or so I hear). You'd think that this thing will be h4xx0r3d pretty quick.

So how legal is this?

[SuperKendall]

I wonder if they are going to get in trouble, or if they have permission for such a plan. I could see them saying each TiVo copy is linked to a physical DVD - but MP3.com tried that long ago to disasterous effect by letting you listen to streamed music of a CD that you identified you owned.

It sounds great though and would be the thing that would finally have me buy a TiVo box. Plus, if you think about it, it could almost make the HDVD spec moot if you could download HD media to your TIVO from Netflix (perhaps in conjuction with HDNet as per the recent story, though they want to ship out physical drives to customers!).

Sounds like a great idea to keep both Netflix and TiVo ahead of rivals.

Exactly what needed to happen

[doormat]

This is an excellent move. I've got a netflix subscription, and I want to get a tivo. The idea of being able to get DVDs on demand over my Tivo (and watch x many times or y hours) is sweet. The only issue is bandwidth. I've got a 3mbit/s connection, and it would be nice to watch it in real time (a well compressed 3mbit/s strem can look nice - DirecTV's channels are a little less than 3mbit/s by comparison). Still, its wonderful to hear this.

About damn time.

Take this into account.

[drseuss9311]

To me it seems like blockbuster and netflix and the like are probably feeling the squeeze from all this tivo/dvr/video-on-demand and need to partner w/ these companies that get into the home each and every day.

When I worked with my local cable provider in tech support for the highspeed clients the cable provider was beta testing the inDemand features in new cable boxes. The employees who wanted to help were the beta testers. I enjoyed the sneak peek at the near future, but on to my main point...

One day i was helping the guy who was deploying the inDemand systems and I was asking him about the technical details and scaling the systems. At the end of the conversation he put it this way:

"They're basically gunning to put blockbuster out of business.."

that's not the exact quote but close... and of course it was only his opinion, but who knows... blockbuster will soon be at the knees of these cable companies with on-demand movies because they can get it to the home.

mod me down if u must

Re:Bandwidth

[jandrese]

You must be lucky, my local video stores (all Blockbusters and locally ownd foreign-language-only places) completely blow for selection. Blockbuster in particular never seems to carry anything I'd actually want to watch. Netflix on the other hand has been like a gift from God. I've been able to watch dozens of old movies that I missed in the theatres years ago and cult classics. I have yet to hear someone talking about a film that I couldn't find on Netflix. Plus, Blockbuster seems to do everything possible to stick you with late fees, even if their storefront is blocked by construction preventing you from getting the DVD back in the slot until 5 minutes past noon. They still send me an occasional coupon for free movie rentals and I throw them away, why should I drive out to the store to rent some movie I didn't really want to see, even if it is free?

Re:hacking

[dmanny]

To what end? I sure wouldn't want to share the results too far. In the gigabytes of data that make up any movie, it would be fairly easy to implement a watermark. Then just wait for the pirates to identify themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I an all in favor of fair use copying. In particular, I find that making copies of movie titles for my Sony DVD changer yields far more preferable discs than the originals. When my two year old kid wants Winnie the Pooh, an FBI screen and mandatory menu are not what is called for.

shaw does this in BC

[null-sRc]

with this one you don't have to wait, it's instant...

only thing is I believe there's only a limited selection but i'm not sure...

https://secure.shaw.ca/sod/home.asp/

The movie should immediately start playing on your TV. Sit back and enjoy the show! Remember that you can stop, pause, rewind or jump forward at any time using your remote control.

Re:TiVo is on its last legs.

[tpillon]

What's the difference between a network cable going to your TV and a phone cable going to your TV? I would assume that most people would have a phone (and therefore a phone line) in the same room as their TV but far fewer people would have a computer\router\switch etc. Mabey I'm missing the point, but that alone seems like a strange reason to choose one over the other, especially if the other costs substantially less.

Re:TIVO vs. Comcast

[silentbozo]

If they cut people off, then end-users will have to choose: keep cable, but forgo Tivo/Netflix, or switch to DSL and get rid of cable. If I were a DSL provider, I'd be offering promo packages to capture cable subscribers that were put into that position - boosting my own subscriber numbers, and putting the hurt on my competition (the local cable monopoly.)

Personally, I'd drop cable - you get a fat pipe down, but it doesn't mean much if you're not allowed to max it out. And who actually watches all 500 channels of programming anyways? Not anyone employed that I know of, unless their job is to watch TV... This has been Tivo's biggest achilles' heel - the dependence on cable/satellite timeshifting for new customers. They've added the home media option, and now Netflix - which helps to break that dependence somewhat.

I'm watching less and less live TV these days - I've got 170 movies in my Netflix queue, about half of them TV series (ie, Stargate SG-1, Mr. Bean, Foyle's War), and the other half divided between documentaries (History Channel, Discover Channel, etc.) and movies.

If Tivo is smart, they'll keep building on this in order to offer other types of programming, and hopefully fight their way back into a position where the cable companies have to deal with them as equals, instead of trying to run them out of town with their own OEM DVRs.

Disclaimer - I own Tivo stock, but I don't have a Tivo unit. I'll be getting my Netflix movies the regular way - via mail.

Re:TiVo = open source

[drawfour]

TiVo's OS is Linux based, you can download the source code: http://tivo.com/linux/linux.asp

Thanks for the link to the source. Does this contain only the enhancements they made to the kernel, or does it contain the TiVo application as well? For example, the rules engine for schedules and conflict resolution? I know they have to release their kernel enhancements, but unless their application is put into the kernel itself, they may not release the source for it.

I'm not sure about all TiVo's but mine has a USB port in the back (and most of the new ones do) but there are several books and online guides (one book that i know of "Hacking the TiVo")

I have the Toshiba SDH-400. It has the USB ports (I use one of them for wireless). I know the original Series 1, you could use the serial port and get a shell prompt. Is there a similar way to do this with the USB connection? I'm quite interested in modifying my TiVo, but I've never found any information regarding the Series 2, specifically the Toshiba SDH-400.

But you can pull the MPEG2's right off the TiVo and on to your hard drive, and then it's onto the DVD burner from there.

This is definitely one thing I want. Any links you can provide would be useful.

Re:Bandwidth

[hazem]

Try checking the local library. There's a good chance they're linked with other libraries and can offer quite a large selection of movies for free.

I was recently living in a rural coastal region and through my local library, I had access to the dvd/video selection of about 12 other libraries. I saved a fortune in rental fees and my non-subscription to cable.

The only real downside was waiting for particular movies. I couldn't plan to watch a certain movie at a certain time because the only copy might be checked out. But I found that if I kept the system filled with requests that usually something interesting would be ready for me.

Cool idea, but quality and sound?

[mwyner]

Sounds pretty cool, but what about those movies with DTS sound and higher quality? Is all that stuff going to be lost in the download? Netflix for me takes about a day or two to get a new movie (return it Tuesday, it's received Wednesday, get new one on Thursday), and for certain movies I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice my sound or quality just to get it somewhat quicker.

Picture Quality?

[Zemrec]

This is awesome if it comes to pass, but I wonder first, will I have to finally get a Series 2 or one of the Pioneer DVD-Rs? Also, how much bandwidth will it use? Hard drive space?

I have a Philips Series 1 with Turbonet and an extra hard drive (only 50 GB total, but that seems good enough for me.) However, I'm noticing there are image quallity problems, lots of stuff just isn't as sharp as live is. And I have it set to use Highest quality.

My setup: Tivo, DirecTV, 5.1 Koss DVD unit, 27" Sony Wega, using composite cables. Yeah, I know S-Video would be better (component even better) But I also use a selector box for my XBox, GameCube and PS2, which are all composite. But thats not problem. If I go direct from DirecTV to the Koss, it looks better.

So it makes me wonder how a movie is going to look. I have 8mbit DSL, so bandwidth isn't an issue for me, (unless this thing is going to do what TiVo does to TV input, watch it all the time...), but I figure they're going to need to compress the stream, maybe using an advanced mpeg4 codec (how about that new H.264 that Apple and DVD Forum is touting?

Mainly I've noticed the quality problems since I "inherited" the Wega from my Dad. Before I was using an older TV, so maybe its just that the Wega is so much crisper anyway that it brings out the flaws in the TiVo video codec?

Is there anything that can be done about that? Would a new TiVo box (either DirecTivo or DVD-R) have better quality? Do the newer boxes have better codecs?

Whats it going to be like with this Netflix over broadband to TiVo?