Blockbuster joining TiVo’s VOD lineup
Blockbuster’s online movie gallery soon will be playing on TiVo boxes, under a deal the two companies will announce today, the New York Times is reporting.
The struggling home video rental giant plans to sell TiVo boxes via its 4,000 retail stores in the U.S. The service via TiVo begins in the second half of the year, the Times reported.
“We are excited to be teaming with TiVo, the company that created the DVR, to make Blockbuster’s entertainment content readily available to their millions of subscribers,” Jim Keyes, chief executive of Blockbuster, said in a nicely canned statement. “Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our On Demand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well.”
TiVo already has a deal with Netflix for its Watch Instantly VOD service. Amazon’s digital movies and TV shows also flow through the TiVo interactive DVRs. In order to rent Blockbuster movies, consumers will need an Internet connection to the TiVo box. The DVR company sells kits that allow for wireless hookups.
Netflix, meanwhile, has cut a deal with Facebook in which subscribers can inflict their movie ratings on their online pals. The subscribers’ ratings appear on their Facebook page and link off to Netflix’s web site via the marketing-driven Facebook Connect. What a terrific idea — for the marketing guys at Netflix. Please tell me I’m missing something here …
Netflix streaming to TiVo boxes
Netflix and TiVo are linking up to stream the video renter’s Watch Instantly service to DVRs.
Testing will begin immediately. TiVo customers with HD-ready set-top boxes will have the streaming movies service by the end of the year, the New York Times reported. An eligible subscription to Netflix is required.
The Watch Instantly service will not be available to those using DirecTV boxes with TiVo.
Netflix has been on the move with its online video service, as slowdowns in its traditional mail rentals have battered the company’s bottom line.
Netflix just announced availability of its streaming movies and TV shows to Mac (Intel) users, as well as to owners of some new Samsung Blu-ray machines.
Recent content deals include partnerships with Starz Entertainment, CBS and Disney. A lot of the films offered on Watch Instantly are catalog titles and indie fare.
TiVo owners in for faster downloads
TiVo box owners jonesing for more storage space finally are in luck. The DVR pioneer hooked up with Western Digital to enable an external hard drive. The catch: you must own an advanced TiVo box, as in not Series 2.
The eSATA drive — going by the tag of My DVR Expander — bulks up the TiVo’s storage capacity by 500 gigabytes. That’s roughly 600 hours of standard definition or 65 hours of high-def programming, TiVo says. The hard drive has to be bought at Best Buy or on TiVo’s web site, apparently.
All of the four upgrades announced earlier this week are limited to networked-in owners of Series 3 DVRs.
The DVR pioneer also unveiled a multi-room viewing feature, in which the advanced TiVo boxes can stream content to another TiVo box, including Series 2
“TiVo to Go,” another it’s-about-time feature, allows programs to be ported over to PCs. From there, the video files can watched elsewhere or burned to blank DVDs. Yes, that means they can be sent to iPods and other handheld devices. The PC needs TiVo Desktop software for Windows, Roxio Toast 8 or, for Macs, Popcorn 3.
TiVo also has joined Vudu in the progressive-downloading game. Instead of waiting for movies or TV shows from Amazon Unbox
(This capability is one of Vudu’s main sales pitches. The 2-month-old service just lowered the price of the Vudu box from $399 to $250, taking a cue from Steve Jobs.)
Here’s the word on how the TiVo progressive downloading is supposed to work, direct from the company’s antenna-wearing PRists:
When a download begins, the TiVo box checks the speed of the download, and calculates whether you can begin playback. If the download speed is going faster than playback speed, it will let users start playback immediately.
If the download is slower, it will wait until users have enough of the program “buffered” on disk to be able to play it from start to finish without hitting the end of the buffer, and then let you start playback.
None of these are breakthroughs, except in the TiVo universe. While well past due, it’s good to see the upgrades, which signal to company is working hard to justify its existence.
Read the TiVo press release.
TiVo’s new HD unit eases sticker shock
TiVo released its first HD recorder last fall. The time-shifting lords were glacially slow to market compared with DirecTV and cable companies. That unit was pricey ($799) — and that’s before you got to TiVo’s subscription fees.
Things just got better. At the end of the month, TiVo sends to market the HD machine’s more economical little brother: The 180-hour TiVo HD DVR
You now can buy the older box for $566 off
One of the cool things you can do with this box is download movies directly from Amazon’s Unbox. Connect to the Net via wiFi.
The unit replaces the cable box and will even capture local HD signals with rabbit ears. You’ll need to rent a CableCard if you have cable. That runs about $1.50 a month. The cable box fee goes away when you return it. The feds just required the cablers to provide this after the usual kicking and screaming from those jokers. They stand to lose PPV/VOD revenue from the migration.
Here’s what the New York Times’ tech guy, David Pogue, has to say about the new HD TiVo:
… (E)ven the new $300 model smokes the circuits off the generic, cruddy-software rivals from the cable companies. The TiVo looks better, works better, and offers about 12,000 useful features that the cable-company boxes lack.
The cards are supposed to work in DVRs, TVs and computers, including media centers. But many of those devices have not yet provided slots for the cards. My up-to-date Sharp Aquino TV doesn’t. Some LG models do. The FCC ruling should speed that along. Still, most of us pilgrims will continue to wait here, impatiently, for the holy grail of convergence.
More good news from TiVo and its sort-of partner DirecTV. The Series2-based DVRs that DirecTV provided its customers are all getting some upgrades. The most significant is addition of Web scheduling, says Ars Technica, which has been all over the TiVo-DirecTV story.
