TiVo and Netflix Hook Up

thejoelpatrol writes "It's official. After denying that such a deal was in the works, TiVo and Netflix have finalized a deal to let TiVo subscribers download movies over their broadband connections. Several such services have sprung up recently, but none has the name recognition of either of these beloved entertainment-technology companies."

Comments

Protecting content

[erick99]

The companies are planning to work together on technology that will secure this content, she said.

This is no small undertaking. I've gotta believe the MPAA and other interested bodies will be up Tivo/Netflix collective arses about piracy. It will be very interesting to see how long it takes to make the MPAA & company feel safe....

Re:Protecting content

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies need to get off their collective arses and start delivering moive-on-demand over broadband, or it will be worse for them in the long run.

The relatively new MPEG-4 format allows people to rip DVD video into pretty small files that have at least the same quality as an old VHS tape, if not a bit better. That means a two-hour movie can be compressed to about 300 megabytes, give or take with still a good quality picture and good sound.

The more widespread broadband connections get and the more advanced P2P technologies become the more that "movie" sharing will become as prevalent as "music" sharing. 300 megabyte files are easy to share from a broadband perspective, taking only 10-20 minutes on average as a torrent download (compared to hours for gigabyte DVD downloads).

Businesses like iTunes are finding it very difficult to compete in the online-music market where everyone is used to music being free, and now here is a newcomer wanting 99 cents and having a smaller selection of music, and formatted in bizarre and unconvertable formats.

It makes sense to have businesses like Netflix and Tivo to want to enter the broadband movie market as early as possible to get the regular consumers used to paying X dollars for movies sent to their TV.

They do have the benefit that most people want to watch movies on their TV rather then their computer, and Tivo is the perfect delivery device for doing just that.

Now anyone want to make a bet on how long before the "Blockbuster" or "Hollywood Video" stores file for Chapter 11?

I'll try it

[CaptainSuperBoy]

I have a TiVo and I'm a Netflix subscriber. I think this is a great idea, but the companies are crazy if they think I'll pay more for it. I already pay $13/mo for TiVo and $22/mo for Netflix, that's $35 total for these services. No way I'm paying more than that, just to download movies from the Internet.

Re:I'll try it

[Brento]

I think this is a great idea, but the companies are crazy if they think I'll pay more for it. I already pay $13/mo for TiVo and $22/mo for Netflix, that's $35 total for these services.

There's a benefit, though. With your current Netflix subscription, you lose movie time when you drop your viewed movie in the mail and wait for another one to come back to you. Plus, the movie that's next in your queue may not be available, and you may have to settle.

With the broadband delivery, there's less turnaround time, and the movie you want is always available. You don't have to worry about movies getting lost in the mail (which happened four separate times to me, and they billed me for all four when I cancelled.)

On Netflix's side, I bet they'd be thrilled, because their costs would go down. Less shipping costs, less printing costs, no more paying people to sort incoming DVD's, etc. If they can cut their own costs while increasing services to the consumer, they might not raise prices anyway, and still raise profits.

Re:I'll try it

[jandrese]

Network bandwidth is _cheap_ compared to paying actual live people to open envelopes all day long. You are forgetting that labor costs are the most expensive part of most businesses, and I'm sure Netflix is no exception.

Re:I'll try it

[warpSpeed]

Network bandwidth is _cheap_ compared to paying actual live people to open envelopes all day long.

Network bandwidth is cheap unless you are Cox, Adelphia, Time-Warner, etc. They may end up shutting people off for pulling down large movies on a regular basis.

I would suspect that with the MASSIVE amounts of bandwidth that NetFlix could end up pushing it would be in their best interested to peer directly with the large cable providers so that both parties can reduce their costs.

Re:I'll try it

[shokk]

Then just go to a local Blockbuster and sign up for their Freedom Pass service, also no late fees and a certain number of movies out at one tim. I used to love Netflix bu them the post office or Netflix or both decided that the movies would not arrive in my mailbox. After wrangling with them for months over the issue I gave up on it and went with the local service. Turn around time on movies is now 0 days, where Netflix always takes time to get the next movie to you. I've found that with that type of turn-around time, I only need to have two movies out at once.

Re:I'll try it

[wallace_mark]

I'd pay more. Easily.

A movie out is $25 bucks for me. Three/month * is $75.

But that ignores problems with Netflix. 1) the long latency time. 2) the fact that movies sit on my shelf for more than a month till I have time to watch them. 3) The number of times I've got 3 movies out that my daughter doesn't want to watch, but my daughter and I want to watch a movie.

Dynamic Netflix would allow me to jump around in the queue overnight. I could d/l the movies we want to watch when we want to watch them.

Well worth the $$ for me.

Re:I'll try it

[mdfst13]

It also depends on when the bandwidth is used. If you get your movie immediately *after* watching the previous one (which is how the mail based system works), then the bandwidth would be mostly used in off peak times. ISPs can give you as much bandwidth as you would like at 3 AM. At 6 PM, they would be scrambling to do so, but at that time you are either surfing the net or just beginning the movie.

Couple of things.

[Eeknay]

First, we have the inevitable piracy argument, that you can rip the movie fairly easily to a computer for all others to see, especially since there's no protection like a DVD could possible give.

Second, what about all those different versions of movies? Will they offer, for example, the Return of the King Theatrical *and* EE version? The primary concern here is both the time it takes to download, since many people have varying speeds of connection, and whether or not TiVo/Netflix can keep up with demand from thousands (millions?) of customers all wanting the same movie when it just gets released.

And in regards to length of movies, what about storage capacity on the TiVo? Won't it fill up awfully quickly given a certain amount of movies downloaded rather than purchased on DVD?

Re:Couple of things.

[the unbeliever]

I doubt people are going to keep these movies around on their TiVo indefinitely. Besides, how big could it be? TV recording is understood to be ~1gb/hour, one can assume these movies will be in the TiVo format, so the same size rules would apply. I doubt anything is larger than 4gb.

Besides, if you run out of room you can always hack your TiVo.

Re:Couple of things.

[tdemark]

First, we have the inevitable piracy argument, that you can rip the movie fairly easily to a computer for all others to see, especially since there's no protection like a DVD could possible give.

Umm... how it is any different than Netflix today? I know people with Netflix accounts and all they do is order DVDs, copy them (removing Macrovision and Region in the process), and then send them back. These people have huge DVD collections and it really only cost them the media and a few months of Netflix.

- Tony

Re:Couple of things.

[GregGardner]

How can you possibly assume there will be no protection of the stream? I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that Tivo is going to try its best to encrypt the movie stream and you will probably have to hack your Tivo to be able to offload the movie off your Tivo and decrypt it.

And I would say that it is much harder to hack a Series 2 Tivo than it is to decrypt a stream on a DVD. DeCSS has been around for years, printed on t-shirts, and implemented in perl in a few lines of code. Series 2 Tivo's employ digital private/public key technology to make sure that the signed kernel isn't changed and that you can't install your own software. Also, they have announced plans for the new TivoToGo feature to allow you to export shows to your PC only by using a USB flash memory device with a private key on it. You know they are going to be at least as paranoid about not pissing off the MPAA with this feature.

About storage size, most Tivos these days have 60 or 80 GB of storage. That is plenty of room to store several movies. I'm sure you could fit a handful of movies even on a 40GB Tivo. Plus, this is Netflix, the DVD *rental* store. You are only expected to have 3 or 4 movies at one given time. This isn't about archiving movies forever. If you want to keep a movie, you buy the DVD for $20.

The time it takes to download a movie and the bandwidth it will take for Tivo and/or Netflix to provide movies to millions of people over the internet is a valid one. But these are real companies with real money to purchase large amounts of bandwidth. As long as you aren't on dialup, they will probably be able to deliver you a movie faster than the USPS can do it. And even if does take longer, at least you are still guaranteed to get the movie you want because there isn't a limit on the number of copies of a given movie.

Physical Medium

[F7F7NoYes]

The deal with TiVo will give Netflix an alternative distribution strategy, Devar said. The company believes DVDs will continue to be the dominant medium for movies over the next few years, but the deal with TiVo gives Netflix a start down the road toward the delivery of movies over the Internet, she said.

I work in the rental industry, In my opinion the masses still like tangible goods. While the DVD is dominant now, another physical delivery method will replace them, not delivery over the internet. It would work for a few demographics but even my grandmother owns a DVD player. She will not be getting this service however.

Re:Physical Medium

[erick99]

Remember when your grandmother owned a VHS player and wasn't interested in a new fangled DVD player? The early-adopters pave the way and interest level for the rest of the population. Getting away from physical media for movies is a natural evolution of the industry. I will admit though, that a lot of folks will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into this particlular "future."

Re:Physical Medium

[GreyPoopon]

Remember when your grandmother owned a VHS player and wasn't interested in a new fangled DVD player?

I must be getting old. No, I don't remember that because I don't think my grandmother was ever aware of DVD technology. What I remember is when my grandparents bought this new fangled VCR and couldn't even manage to

1. Set the clock to make it stop flashing
2. Scan through the channels
3. Understand that in order to watch a movie, the video signal had to be on "VCR" rather than "TV" or "Cable" or "Ant".
4. Understand that in order to record a television show you had to set the VCR itself on the channel you wanted to record (I don't think they ever ended up recording ANYTHING)
5. Figure out that you can actually record one show while watching another. (OK, I'll grant this was probably too advanced for many VCR users)

Thank you for making me feel old.

The Register has a little more info

[kentmartin]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/netflix_ti vo_deal/ has some more info (albeit in a shorter article). It mentions that copy protection will be a bit a priority and that it should be easier to enforce than on anything as openly standard as PCs.

Should be cool though

The Key Quote" Secure This Content"

[KrisHolland]

"The companies are planning to work together on technology that will secure this content, she said."

Here is a clue, if I can view it then it is not secure nor will it ever be secure enough.

DRM is the crazy idea of giving me the content, and also the key to view it, but though obfuscation somehow hide the decrypt process. It won't work in the long run.

Re:The Key Quote" Secure This Content"

[MindStalker]

Well the tivo2 is a bit harder to hack, but not impossible. Either way yes, its not totally secure, I heard somewhere something about how tivo is changing their new boxes, or possibly upgrading series2, to make it so pay-per-view movies and other broadcast-flagged content will automatially dissapear after 3 days, but still be recorded. Personally I see this as a reasonable comprimise. The new netflix movies will probably autodelete themselves after you turn them in in order to download new movies. Hopefully it won't delete untill you have fully downloaded and started to watch the newest movies so there isn't the time lag between turning them in and watching the newest ones.

Re:The Key Quote" Secure This Content"

[Richard_at_work]

No, DRM wont work in the long run, but its already been proven that the honor system doesnt work either. What do you suggest? They just give up? If that was the case then nothing would have locks, there would be no PIN code for your ATM access, and drivers licenses would be unworkable. Nothing works 100%, but things do work better than 0%, and anything which works better than 0% while doing its job is a success in this arena.

Interested To See Microsoft's Reply

[BRock97]

Chalk up another weapon in Tivo's arsenal for living room domination. One of the final strokes would be for them to make the Tivo the centralized media portal in the house with the ability to run clients on PCs, other TV's, and maybe even the Playstation 2, precisely what Microsoft is doing with Media Center Edition and the Xbox. For Tivo's sake, I hope they play this correctly as it has the possiblity to either make or break the company.

I do wonder, though, if we won't see a similar announcement from Microsoft in the near future. After all, wouldn't a service like this fit perfectly into their growing living room plans? I would think so.

For me, I would love to have this type of functionality from Tivo. The ability to not only stream shows that you have recorded, but movies that you have downloaded from Netflix to any client would probably make me invest in a Tivo setup.

Re:The Register has a little more info

[seanyboy]

This is great news apart from the fact that I can't even buy a TiVo in the UK, never mind netflix. Tivo should be spending more time reopening markets, and less time pandering to the "next big thing"

And Will it Make Money?

[ej0c]

I sure hope so, 'cause I'm getting tired of tracking those TIVO shares I bought at $35 thinking it was underpriced..

Re:The Register has a little more info

[Eeknay]

TiVo was in fact released here in the UK, but it never took off, and as a result they withdrew it from the market. Instead, we have Sky+, and the reason that was so successful was because it intergrated two exisiting components - the Sky set-top box, which received the satellite service, and also a TiVo box, which recorded your programmes/movies. Since many, many people already subscribe to Sky, all they would have to do is buy the box for around £150, and upgrade their monthly service for an extra £10. And in regards to Netflix, you can record Sky Movies and Box Office showings on your Sky+ box, without having to download anything. Unfortunatly they're not latest releases, but hey, it's better than nothing.

Whoa!

[mcc]

Wait, this is a pretty big deal, isn't it? This is basically the fabled iTunes Music Store for Video.

I mean, yeah, there have been net video stores before, but none of them seemed terribly serious, all of them lacked a focus on appealing to traditional consumer rather than (well) people like us, and none of them possessed any pleasant sort of integration with more traditional video technology not based entirely on a computer-- all very much, interestingly, like the net music stores that existed before the iTunes Music Store...

This has the potential to become a big deal and resecure the position as "the PVR" Tivo once had...

This will last just long enough

[Kushy]

This will just last just long enough till someone cracks the copy protection that Tivo and netflicks agree on. Then the MPAA will come down with the iron fist and all bets will be off and it will just be a memory like Divx DVD's are.

So its a nice idea but it will not last longer then 4 weeks till its cracked and ppl are back to buying plastic disks...

Re:This will last just long enough

[DrXym]

Whether the encryption is cracked or not is irrelevant really. It's not as if you're getting movies that aren't out on DVD. And a DVD is a much easier thing to crack than some format being sent between TIVO & Netflix.

As proof of that, note that you can easily get DVD rips right now. So what's the point of cracking the TIVO system? And even if it is cracked, it seems highly likely that each movie would be digitally watermarked with your account number, TIVO box and other incriminating info. So releasing it out onto the P2P networks seems like a very foolhardy thing to do.

The only benefit from a cracked system is perhaps you could build your own personal jukebox of movies. Again, it's not like you can't do that already so I wonder what the point is.

Re:This will last just long enough

[DrXym]

I don't see why not. The speed of the system is obviously network bound, not computational bound. I'm assuming that Netflix would have a library of titles pre-ripped into the appropriate media format. Then it's a matter of sending them over the wire, encrypting / DRM'ing them as you go.

I doubt it would be too tricky to twiddle the odd key frame to insert customer specific data. This could be done overtly as with those annoying dots that some film prints have these days, or covertly by changing some insignificant bits in the video / sound. Or a mix of covert and overt. We're not talking much data here either. I'd guess that 64 bits would uniquely identify every user / box combo in existence with room to spare.

Of course if someone grabbed two hacked movies, a naive scheme might allow them to splice the two watermarked movies into a single 'clean' movie. e.g. compare each frame, identify the different ones and pick the one that looks clean.

So on top of basic watermarking you might also toss in some random salt (e.g. random bits every now and then), vary the embedded id based on some formula, and even imperceptably stretch / compress parts of the audio / video to make it hard to what is clean and what isn't.

It also has to be robust enough that it is discernable even if the video is recompressed. But beyond that you're pursuing diminishing returns.

All you're trying to do is scare your users into compliance. If they really want that movie, there are plenty of easier ways of doing it, including just going out and renting / ripping it. The quality would probably be better anyway.

Tivo/Netflix =! iTunes parallel: Burn to disk

[CdBee]

I believe iTunes was such a big thing due to their liberal licencing, they permtted the user to "own" the tracks by copying them permanently to an unprotected CD.

A Tivo may be a nice, reliable bit of kit but ultimately, its a hard drive and as such will eventually fail or be upgraded. If this service locks the media file to the tivo unit - as it certainly will do - then it is more illiberal than iTunes.

Services of this sort really need to recognise that the licence to play the file has passed to the purchaser by allowing backup of the file to unprotected physical media. I love the idea and the convenience but I won't buy into these services until they offer me the kind of long-term security that the uneven pile of DVD cases by my TV offers. If I can play the movie on my PC over a network connection, in a player of my choice, even better.

Until then, DRM encumbers my usage and I take my right as a consumer not to buy, as I may wish to take my DVDs to a friends house to watch them but I draw the line at lugging my Tivo around.

Frictionless economy.

[ahfoo]

But you see, here is the whole crux of the issue. If it really does cost next to nothing to distribute video over the Net, especially with the user subsidizing the connection, then how do you justify the prices?
You can't --well at least not without resorting to sunday school guilt tactics that might sound nice in an on-line forum but don't do shit in the real world where the average person is far too cynical. So you can't convince the consumer that it's wrong to redistribute. The only thing you can do is play the DRM game, but obviously encryption is worthless when you're sending your precious "secret" to an audiance that has no interest in preserving the secret.
Asking the consumer to pay for the bandwidth AND the content simply will not work. A more likely business model is an ISP offering free movies to keep subscribers --and considering it an honor!
Digital content is worth the cheapest media it can be printed on and I just bought a stack of DVD+Rs 4Xs for 16cents a piece. No shit.

Oh Man...

[Omicron]

This is gonna push me over the edge. I've resisted buying a TiVo so far...and I've tried out NetFlix, but I don't like the slow mailing times to receive a movie...I'm more of an instant gratification kind of guy.

This combination could be dangerous for someone like me :)

Finally!

[Toasty16]

Now I can watch those movies that I'm too embarrassed to let the mailman deliver. Anal Assassins 5, you're next in the queue!

Re:Finally!

[Malc]

Don't worry: your choices will go in to their databases and you will shortly be receiving direct mail marketing material through the postal system. Your mailman will still be delivering embarassing material!

Re:Finally!

[One Louder]

Don't bother - George Lucas really should have stopped with the first Anal Assassins trilogy.

Its really a merger

[cpn2000]

The new company will be called Titflix ... ducks

Hurts the MS DRM strategy?

[Idou]

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought that was going to be the next big road block MS was going to use to keep consumers from jumping to Linux. By adding DRM to Windows, MS could convince the proprietary content providers to sell their content through Windows. Since Linux is open source, it would be much harder to get large corps to trust a DRM solution for it. Then MS could use DRM as an excuse to force the hardware industry to only create DRM enabled hardware which would not be compatible with Linux. Not only would people not be able to legally watch downloaded movies on Linux, soon it would become increasing diffcult to find good, cheap hardware that was compatible with Linux.

However, it appears that it is simply going to be easier to sell such content services through hardware specifically created for such purposes and not through modified pcs. Not even MS was able to get the PC industry to do a 180 (go from general to specialized hardware by limiting the user's control) fast enough. And, ironically, the specialized hardware approach to content services is being propelled even more quickly by the economics that embedded Linux is making possible.

One might even get the feeling that an imaginary hand is leading Linux/Open Source to wider and wider adoption . . .

Why the focus on digital delivery?

[BreadMan]

I know that the nifty thing to do for netflix is to deliver the movie and not have to pay the post, but the existing netflix business model still has a lot of other long hanging fruit that could be picked by partnering with TiVo

For example, why couldn't my TiVo:

- Recommend movies for me based on my viewing ordering patterns
I could see what TiVo recommends and just order from my TiVo.

- Offer me the ability to order movies based that I'm currently watching
So I could see a movie commercial-free and uncut if I don't like the way the network has edited it or I don't like the pan and scan. Or recommend a movie related to what I'm currently watching.

- Let me search/browse the NetFlix database and order.
The TiVo has the capacity to keep a NetFlix inventory. Ordering from the TV seems more comfortable way to interact with NetFlix.

- Let me manage my NetFlix account
What movies to I have, how many more could I request, what I've ordered.

Cable Companies and Bandwidth Abuse?

[superid]

Comcast allegedly has a magic number that triggers an abuse letter to subscribers. It's been purported to be around 100GB of transfer per month.

I assume that the Tivo/netflix movies will be high quality and so probably won't be less than 4GB for a feature.

So in a house with 3 teens and 5 computers I wonder how hard it would be to reach this cap via 10+ movies per month, heavy MMPORPG usage, the new comcast video mail, etc

Re:Cable Companies and Bandwidth Abuse?

[warpSpeed]

The cable companies are going to have to get used to people actually using more and more bandwidth as time goes on. As more over the net products become available the bandwidth usage will go up.

The smart move if for the cable companies and Tivo/Flix to start peering so as to reduce their networking costs.

Re:Cable Companies and Bandwidth Abuse?

[Solder Fumes]

That won't happen because despite what the cable companies whine, they make money on every account. The people who have cable modems and then just use it to check email are the ones giving the cable companies the most profit. If their bandwidth was billed like electricity, they'd pay almost nothing. That's not what cable companies want to see.

Re:Tivo/Netflix =! iTunes parallel: Burn to disk

[xsecrets]

Well concidering that the service Netflix provides now you don't get to keep the media either I believe it's a good fit. For a rental service I don't mind the fact that the movie stays on the harddrive, or even the fact that it's drm'd and may get erased when I go to download movie#4 or whatever. As long as they tout it as a rental service and keep the cost down they should be good.

DirecTiVo

[RedX]

Although it's not mentioned either way in this press release, I can only assume that the DirecTiVo will not be supported with this new service since a) there's no official support for broadband on these boxes, b) DirecTV hasn't released new features on these boxes in quite some time (ie. still no official HMO, no official 4.0, etc.), and c) this would compete directly with DirecTV's pay-per-view movies. It's a shame really that DirecTV doesn't keep these boxes up-to-date on the software side, the DirecTiVo is probably the best DVR on the market, particularly the model with HD support. Of course, rumor has it that DirecTV will be turning to an in-house DVR in 2005.

Use NetFlix website?

[HomeGroove]

Quoth the article:

TiVo subscribers would be able to visit Netflix's Web site and either stream movies over a broadband connection or download them to their TiVo boxes, Kelly said.

I hope this is not the case. In order to be a success, I need to not have to get off my fat ass and go to the computer, sign in, browse, order, and then go to Tivo to watch a movie. The interface needs to be from the Tivo itself.

• *boo-ga* Tivo Central
• *boo-ga* Netflix menu
• *boo-ga* Search by title
• *boo-ga* A-N-C-H -> Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy (Sidenote: Why does this DVD come out in December?)
• Streamy goodness

Now, I do see where the website would come in handy to order flicks while at work and have one waiting for you when you come home. And will it be PPV or subscription (or both)?

With low quality sound and video ?!?...

[Osrin]

Without either a digital output for 5.1 or 7.1 sound and a the ability to download and reply HIGH resolution movies this just isn't going to work. I have to hope that they push a new generation of hardware if they ever want to make this service interesting.

How about HD?

[tgibbs]

To sell this to me, they'll have to offer better than DVD quality--like HD. But the HDTiVo doesn't even connect to the internet yet, and it is sold only for DirecTV, who may well see this as competition.

Using my bandwidth, for their profit

[wooger]

Has anyone considered the problem that this service will clog up the bandwidth normally used for filesharing, streaming video & audio, & downloading Distros etc?

In the UK, with a 1MB downpipe, downloading 1 movie would use around 1/4 of available bandwidth for a day.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Hassman]

Perhaps not to you. But what about everyone who doesn't want to spend an arm and a leg to get digital cable?

I for one have no plans to get digital cable any time soon. I'd rather not drop that much cash on TV. There are more important things. I personally already think I'm overpaying for standard cable...

This deal, however, appeals to me greatly, and I'm sure there are tons of people like me who are happy about this.