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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."
Where do they plan on finding super-high bandwidth connections for home users? For me at least, it is and would remain much faster to to spend five minutes walking the two blocks to the video rental shop and just get one there, rather than waiting a couple hours for the movie to download.
"...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.
Hey, fix the damn al a carte system first! I don't want to order my cable with the existing packages, but would rather only pay for the channels (and services) I prefer. No damned shopping channels and such, just give me news channels, History channel, TLC, Discovery, BBC, Speedvision, ESPN, TCM and broadband cable, with the OPTION of being able to order specific movies or events ON DEMAND when I want them.
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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.
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
On it's last leg but it continues to try to find new ways to innovate while your cable company and satellite company continue to rip off their ideas? Maybe so but who's coming up with the good ideas and implementing them in such a way that it just works? Tivo created the DVR, you can bet they've got a few ideas up their sleaves yet... i for one will buy a tivo and a netflix account if this hits :)
My problem with directv was that you needed a phoneline to use their boxes, blah on that, tivo let's me use broadband which i don't mind running cat5 to my tv, but why should i run a flipping phoneline to my tv? doesn't make sense. comcast might have a similar option but ya know... i can't even get it in my area yet, or if i can i have to have the bastards bring out another box, who knows how long that'll take, they still haven't come and picked up their crappy cable modem that died on me that has been in it's box for a good year now.
I welcome this kind of service.. now hopefully it's cheaper for netflix to do this over the net than it is to send it in the mail and i don't have to pay $20/mo for this type of service.. which i think is kinda high for my own personal viewing habits.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
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.
Hey you know you could save some more money by just stealing the DVD-Rs as well!
Because without Tivo your cable company is going to go back to doing what it always does. Never innovate and always raise prices. It took Tivo to get them off of their butts and finally implement DVR. You still can't stream MP3s or anything else to your cable box (which is handy when your stereo is attached to your TV). I don't know about your area, but in mine the "video on demand" service is a joke, there are like 50 movies on it and they're all summer movie crap, and they're fairly expensive to rent. If the Tivo/Netflix partnership goes well, that service could be greatly improved (and reduced in price) while your local monopoly tries their hardest to squash their competition.
I read the internet for the articles.
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
------ no thanks... I've quit
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.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
For the following reasons:
Don't try to search for an upcoming show by name -- you'll have to hit TVGuide.com for that -- definitely not an integrated experience!
You also won't be seeing any "TiVo suggestions", based on which shows you've given the "thumbs up" to.
You won't be able to modify that cable box, either. TiVo is Linux based, and a LOT of hacks exist, so that you can do more with your equipment. That cable box is NOT your equipment, so just sit back and relax, and hope that you don't ever want to do anything with all that content but watch it on your TV later.
You're missing out on a bit of functionality there -- but go ahead and enjoy your less expensive solution... while I enjoy knowing that what mine is mine, and not rented.
Oh yeah, I only pay $6.95 a month for TiVo service. Just call them up and threaten to leave -- they are more than willing to negotiate. You definitely can't say that for your cable company!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
- Broadband is presumably required
to download the DVD content
- This will likely be broadband over cable in most areas
- My provider, Comcast, offers a competing on-demand service
- Comcast is known to terminate service
for anyone who actually uses their unlimited broadband
- Sign up, start downloading
... then go begging to get your Internet restored?
I suspect that other large cable/broadband providers will do the same (terminate, interrupt, or otherwise impede service), perhaps regardless of whether they provide on-demand services that directly compete with this Tivo/Netflicks offering.Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
The Matrix clocks in at 7.8GB.
At 1 Mb/s, that's close to a day.
Or by "DVD", maybe they mean a low quality copy of the movie you might rent on DVD, with none of the extras, bells or whistles.