TiVo, Netflix sign development deal

Netflix and TiVo announced on Thursday a partnership on an entertainment service as well as efforts to secure content from Hollywood studios.

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  • buran

    To do … what? That’s one of the most useless stories I’ve seen in awhile. But then, it’s CNet…

  • tzikeh

    To allow delivery of Netflix requests over broadband directly to the TiVo, rather than sending them through the mails on dvd.

  • megazone

    CNet posts news flashes and then fleshes them out bit by bit – there is more there now.

  • unteins

    I was all excited about this….until I read about the Macrovision thing…that’s lame…I should be able to store it on my Tivo until I want to delete it….I mean, really, even a super upgraded Tivo with 600 Hrs of storage can’t hold THAT much, plus it would be lower than DVD quality….hopefully they also include quality options like Basic for fast download and high quality for the movie nut.

  • buran

    Oh, neat! Once it starts up I’ll have to see what reviews say and then consider signing up. What is the monthly going rate for Netflix at the moment?

  • megazone

    Most likely it will be one quality, and there is no reason it can’t be full DVD quality. There have been a few threads on this on alt.video.ptv.tivo since the rumors started and I’ve written out the math too many times already. :-)

    Basically even on a low-end common broadband connection a normal movie at full DVD quality could still download overnight. With 3Mbps, 6Mbps, and even 10Mbps available in some areas those folks would be able to pull them down all the faster.

    This isn’t meant to be VoD – it is a replacement for waiting for a DVD in the mail. Which for most people takes at least a couple of days, and then you have to mail it back too.

    I’m not that worried about the Macrovision aspect – TiVo and ReplayTV have both supported MacroVision for years. Multi-Room Viewing even has controls in the software to prevent sharing if a flag is set. Have you *ever* heard of it being used? I haven’t.

    This new MacroVision system gives content providers more control, which is the only way they’ll ever agree to this kind of thing in the first place. But just because it is there doesn’t mean they’ll really use it, or that all of them will. It just gives the bean counters the warm fuzzies. The article is also less than clear – some of the things, about controlling digital to analog, sound like the FCC mandated Broadcast Flag support that ties into digital TV.

    Digital Rights Management is a fact of life from here on out. How far studios go will be largely determined by the market. If, say, Warner tries to be draconian but Sony (who owns Columbia Tri-Star and is in the process of buying MGM) decides to be lax, it’ll pressure Warner to let up, etc.

    (Aside: The Sony buyout of MGM almost assures Blu-Ray will kick HD-DVD’s ass in the market. Sony is the principle Blu-Ray backer. They’ve already announced the PS3 *will* use it – confirming the earlier rumors. And they’d previosuly stated that Columbia Tri-Star films would be released on Blu-Ray. If they release their library online on Blu-Ray, they’ll lock HD-DVD out since they’ll control the largest film library with many of the most popular titles of all time.)

  • unteins

    Yeah, they may or may not do anything to restrict time.

    On the quality issue, it wouldn’t be THAT expensive (storage is sickeningly cheap) for them to offer multiple quality levels. Mostly, think about the disk space usage on a 40 GB box. Assuming that a two hour movie uses up 5 GB, that’s a big chunk of drive space to dedicate to a movie. Not that anyone should have a 40 GB model, adding a drive is trivially easy, but, whatever.