Amazon & Tivo Take on Netflix

RadioTV writes "Amazon is in Beta testing with select Tivo users to allow Unbox videos to be downloaded to Series 2 and 3 set-top boxes. The FAQ for the service is available." The price point for movies is fairly reasonable. No HD and won't work with DirecTV's obsoleted HD tivo, but this is a step in the right direction.

This excites me

[Applekid]

I can't be the only one who thinks this is a cool idea. If you look at the FAQ, you can even erase it from the Tivo and download it again when you want to watch it. Sounds like an offsite movie storage arrangement simply for the cost of Unbox movies.

And that they aren't going to lock it in to the tivo and let me transfer it to my PC? Golden. I love the idea of hearing about a cool flick at work, logging in and buying it, and then coming home to it sitting there and just waiting for me to watch it.

This is the future

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The current model is: The TV networks produce/buy content. They pad it with advertisements. They get money from the advertisers paying for the whole project. They broadcast these content 24/7/365. Most people get between a few dozen to a few hundred of these channels. They pay nothing other than their eye-ball time. [The cable/sat fees are paid to the delivery infrastructure, not to the content producers or TV networks.]

This model is dead. The networks have to add ads that the customers dont want and make sure it is not too onerous. With the advent of PVR, ad skipping is here to stay. If ad-skipping is prevented by technology or law people would stop watching the shows. They wont accept ads anymore. Once the revenue stream is gone or severely reduced, the TV networks can not produce interesting and exciting content.

So the new model is going to be to use the internet to pump the shows people want to watch in their hard disks at home connected to TV. They will pay for content. They have to. They cant sneak ad in again like they did in cable tv because, no advertiser is going to pay for ads that people are going to skip anyway. I like this new model. Due to economy of scale and cutting out the fat in TV networks and ad management etc, I expect a service that will give me "Jeopardy, Tonight Show, Daily Show, This Week with George Stephenopolis, Shoot out, Dog fights, Myth busters, NOVA, BBC news, and a few History channel, Discovery Channel and national geographic shows" for about 10 or 20 $ a month. Great! Even my 740Kbps service has enough bandwidth to download all these with plenty left over for my vpn connection to work. I hope it succeeds. I think it will succeed.

Digital Delivery = Dozens of Players

[popo]

YouTube, Amazon, NetFlix, Xbox Live, Sony, Apple, Cable companies, Sattelite companies ....

There are no shortage of players eyeballing paid digital delivery.

Internet access plus TV-connected hardware is hardly a rare or difficult-to-repeat formula.

These margins are going to get razor thin... And the "capture apps" that permanently save this
stuff haven't even *begun* to beome widespread yet.

All these $3 short term digital "rentals" are going to look a whole lot like purchases before
the studios even know what hit 'em.

Re:Seems a little ridiculous...

[TheThiefMaster]

I think it's more for when you join a series part-way through and want to download it to watch the first few eps, or for downloading older shows that aren't currently being aired (or are being repeated at random).

These reasons, along with the convenience of not having to have a tivo and bypassing your country's year+ delay in showing new shows are why most people download torrents of tv shows.

Series 3? Yeah!

[MBCook]

I've got to say, I've got a Series 3 and I love it. That said, it's great that they are doing this on Series 3 as well as the Series 2 machines. It's no secret (if you follow TiVos) that some of the Series 2 features (like multi-room-viewing) aren't available on the Series 3 (stupid Cable Labs). Series 3 is also a little behind of some features (Series 2 has folders/recently deleted and such, Series 3 doesn't yet but they showed it at CES). It's nice to see a feature available for both.

I'm a little disappointed at the lack of HD content, but I completely understand why.

I wish I got to test this. I'd love to.

I especially like that once you've purchased something you can download it again for free. It would be untenable if you couldn't.

they are competing with iTunes, not Netflix

[soren100]

Tivo has to make some kind of partnership to survive -- it simply doesn't make sense otherwise.

I bought a used series 2 TIVO for $50, but they were charging $20 / mo. and I had to sign up for a year's contract to get any service.

Comcast only charges me $11.95 / mo. for their DVR and I can run it month to month so I can ditch it when something more mature and cheaper comes to the market. Tivo just seem like jerks compared to that, but it's because they are so desperate they have to act like a cell-phone company. Even if you give someone a gift certificate, it only counts *towards* them signing up for a 1-year contract.

I laughed when I saw Apple's iTV offering, but then I heard Disney had already sold over $1 Million worth of downloaded movies over iTunes. Then I started thinking about what could happen if I let go of the cable TV (at $60 / month) and just ordered the shows I want over iTunes -- the only show I care about is the Daily Show, and anything else I watch is really just a distraction from my life.

The good thing about this is that it shows that the market is moving to an iTunes distribution model, and that kind of competition will only help everyone. iTunes is the competition space here though, not Netflix

.

Re:This is the future

[tkrotchko]

"This model is dead"

Well, it's not dead, and based on the number of organizations involved in the advertiser-based model, there's still a lot of money to be made.

But you can make a compelling case that the current system offers a chance to discover shows you don't know about. Are you willing to spend $2 on a new TV show that no one has never seen? Probably not. Because good TV shows are pretty rare. They come out with bunches every year and most fail because they're lousy. The pay per download scenario doesn't solve that problem.

Also, some of us just like to channel surf. Just graze a few minutes here and there. If something is interesting, we stay, otherwise we go.

Specialty channels like HGTV probably can't exist with pay per view. None of the shows individually is very compelling, but the package of shows makes it compelling ( this is the issue with satellite radio, by the way, but that's a different story).

I think it's more correct to say that there are more options are available and the market will become stratified to support lots of choices. If people lose interest in the channel surfing model, then that model will go away. If new shows can't get started because nobody wants to pay for an untested download, then that will tend to hurt the pay per download model.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Re:This excites me

[Phishcast]

I'd wager at least as many people have their PC's hooked up to a TV as have TiVo.

Really??? If you're willing to wager I think a lot of people would take you up on it. I'm a geek and I've only hooked up a computer to my television once. Given this was about four years ago, but it looked crappy even with an S-Video cable and I got sick of having a wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table. I won't be doing it again soon if I can avoid it. I'd be surprised if there weren't 20 or more TiVo's plugged into televisions for every computer out there that is.

Oh, and I love my TiVo and my modded XBox with XBox Media Center.