Comments on: Netflix Streams Onto TiVo

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:03:56 +0000

Glenn, I’m confused – I said I think TiVo *will* add services like Hulu and CBS.com:

What’s next for TiVo and broadband content? I think we’ll see them making deals with more content portal sites and networks, like Hulu.com and CBS.com. It is just logical, and TiVo already has the infrastructure to support such streaming sites. I think TiVo is making the right moves.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:38:33 +0000

Mega–Good news, thanks. Have to disagree with you about Hulu though. For me its a FREE service (with ads) that I can use to fill in episodes or shows I missed for one reason or another. Maybe I only notice a show is on and start watching after the third episode and want to see the first two. Maybe somebody recommends a show to me. My Tivo can only record the things I tell it to. So I watch some stuff on Hulu. Sure maybe my cable provider has as a VOD, but my TivoHD doesn’t work with that, at least not until I replace it with the yet to be announced tru2way compatible version we’re all expecting to be announced soon. So for the moment I’d personally LOVE to see Tivo add support for services like Hulu. And not just Hulu–why not CBS.COM or ABC.COM as well, or even ComedyCentral.com? There’s a lot more to web video than youtube these days.

Yes I understand that each one of these brings different codecs (flash, ON7, h.264…) and thus challenges for Tivo, but hopefully we’ll see support for these over time. If Tivo wants to be my video STB for all time, it needs to move in this direction.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:20:21 +0000

Sweet, I have a bunch of stuff in my queue that’s “View Now”

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:03:02 +0000

Yeah, I asked them how it was encoded and protected. Not sure if it’s in the current build or coming with a fall update, though. I assume it’ll be in an update, but just guessing.

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:58:50 +0000

TiVo confirmed that? Cool. That means they do have WMV/VC-1 support in the software now then. Actually, do you know if this will be flipped on for the current software, or will there be a ’9.4.1′ with the VC-1 support? Could that be the beta program recruitment that recently leaked out?

Either way, now that TiVo has MPEG-4/H.264 and WMV/VC-1 decoding support I hope they start supporting video blogs natively so we can move away from TiVo Web Video transcoding on TiVo Desktop. And get us some HD blogs from Rev3 and the like.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:55:33 +0000

It’s VC-1 and uses Microsoft DRM. Surprised it took them this long since everyone other than Apple seems to be using it. (: