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....

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.

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.

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"

[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.

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: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.

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: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!