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LG & Netflix Team Up to Offer Downloadable Movies on TV
eldavojohn writes "It might seem like they've come full circle, but the movie injection method has gone from TV to mail to online download to TV on demand. And Netflix & LG are betting it's going to be a hit. They're also betting you will want to buy yet another device for your home theater. A Wall Street Journal article notes: 'The partnership between Netflix, Los Gatos, Calif., and South Korea's LG represents another gamble by technology companies that video from the Internet, which is commonly downloaded to personal computers, will go mainstream when users can easily access it from TV sets. So far, Internet television products such as Apple Inc.'s Apple TV have largely been unsuccessful, stymied by a poor selection of videos, complexity of use and other shortcomings.'"
Because it is going to come down to the difference of just being able to read different FILE formats, like jpg vs. gif.
What's Netflix's bussiness advantage over the cable companies? Simple, it's hard to push 7.6GB of dvd info over the wire. It's faster to mail it. And bule ray/HDDVD would play to netflix advantage.
The only way to beat this effect is to reduce the bandwidth--which the cable companies can do just fine without netflix-- and to distribute the serving (bit torrent versus central caches).
Unless the TV set is going to also do bit torrent style distrubuted serving they won't gain anything on the cable companies.
The real magic is going to happen when apple or microsoft or adobe flips a switch one day that lets everyone opt in as a paid bittorrent node for some movie distribution company. You would get paid in credits for movie rentals based on how much bandwidth you served. then all of a sudden you could have high quality movie distribution.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Just please let me do this on my TiVo, my Series 3. I don't want to watch movies on my laptop (especially if you make me use Windows to do it, I'm a Mac guy). I don't want to watch them on my iPod (mine can't play movies, but if I want to watch a movie on the go I'll stick a DVD in my MacBook Pro). I don't care about DRM that only lets me have 3 DVD at a time (ala the current subscription model I use on Netflix). It's OK if I can't transfer it between TiVos, or copy it do my computer. I really don't care.
Just let me download and watch movies and TV shows to my TiVo. Like Amazon Unbox, but tied to my Netflix queue and subscription model. Unbox looks nice enough, but I already pay Netflix, so I haven't really used it (my parents like it though).
It doesn't have to be HD. HD would be fantastic, but as long as it's 480p I'll be happy (since that fits with the DVDs I use now). Note that this doesn't mean 480p letter boxed that my TV can zoom, so I lose 150 lines to black bars, the wide screen content should be 480p tall.
Do that, I'll gladly sign up. I'll pay a tiny bit extra, say $1-2 per month on my Netflix account for the privilege. I would find this tremendously useful.
Netflix says they don't want a "Netflix Box", they want 100 of them. Good! Make the TiVo Series 3 one of them. I don't want another box either. I don't want to buy a new TV to get the functionality. I love my TiVo's UI, and I love Netflix's content. Please put them together. Make me a happy consumer.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Programming-on-demand is about the only future I can see for television. The advertising-supported broadcast model falls totally flat for me. I subscribed to Netflix so I can watch movies the few good TV shows when I want, without commercials. If I can do this for a reasonable price with instant gratification (instead of the current Netflix three-day latency), then count me in.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
... with an s-video cable. The only difference is that now they want me to pay for it.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
As a consequence of a loony civil way between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Microsoft, apple and now Netflix will kill both formats.
Microsoft has helped keep the civil war alive.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20071205123352_Microsoft_Accused_of_Eventual_Blu_Ray_HD_DVD_Formats_Fiasco.html
Without a stalemate Christmas 2007 would have seen massive buying of cheap HD players. We would all being watching HD movies and be getting used to them. We would get so spoiled by the superior picture quality that we would not succumb to inferior download quality.
However now that there there is a stalemate going on people are nervous to buy either standard and each standard is still quite expensive. Some people including myself don't want to buy some standard that wont play all movies because some are exclusive to only one format.
Now people will simply say since there is no reliable HD standard why not download a lesser quality version from Netflix or apple or Microsoft. They will do this for both rental purposes and to buy a permanent copy. Then they will get very habituated to it. As time goes watching movies buy obtaining a physical medium will seem less and less attractive. In 2012 there will be enough bandwidth for most high speed internet connections to download HD movies. HD-DVD and blue ray will be both be dead and buried by 2014.
But this requires the stupidity of both Sony and Toshiba to keep their rivalry going and be unwilling to compromise even though it is both of their interests to do so. They seem though to have come through 100% on the doofus front.
As of right now, I can only do this on my Xbox 360, my PS3, my Tivo, and my computer. Just the other day I was thinking "Man, I just wish I had yet ANOTHER way to do the same damn thing!"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Absolutely,
but unfortunately no one at Sony believes that there is any future to Moving pictures. For something like that to succeed, Sony would need:
-a large catalog of moving pictures,
- some form of a magical network connection for distribution, and lastly
-a device connected to a TV
Sadly, none of those things are yet feasible.
Microsoft, on the other hand doesn't have neither the money or clout to do something like that. Their true strengths are search, web-mail, MP3 players and Live.
The moving pictures - on demand are not yet a very lucrative market.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.